LAHORE – Instead of taking action against pilots for presenting forged academic certificates, the PIA authorities retired them with all post-retirement benefits, sources told TheNation.
According to sources, the PIA terminated only one pilot, Captain Faheem, while Capt Arshad, Capt Shayan, Capt Jahanzeb, Capt Haneef, Capt Shahid Mannan and Capt Asmat were awarded forced retirement with benefits.
Most of those pilots have joined other airlines and went scot free for their cheating.
Appointment of ineligible people in the PIA dated back to the regime of Ziaul Haq who appointed a Canadian national of Pakistani descend when he was visiting Canada.
A slew of appointments made during the tenures of subsequent governments of Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and General (r) Pervez Musharraf.
During this time many unqualified people were appointed at key posts of the national flag carrier on grounds of political affiliation.
According to rules, no officer can be promoted from group 4 to 5 unless he possessed a graduation degree by an HEC recognised university. A PIA officials said: “We are in process of verification of the degrees of our employees.”  Sources say that some officers promoted to senior groups have fake degrees of Al-Khair University.
But the years in which they were enrolled in the university and attending classes, are those when they were on duty in Lahore.