Incompetence is the Hallmark of the Corrupt Nawaz Sharif PML-N Government
Of New Islamabad Airport
Brig Rashid Wali Janjua
First visit to Islamabad Airport. Today was my first visit to the new airport as I was travelling to Karachi via PK 309. I started from Chaklala Scheme III at 16.45 hrs and reached the airport exactly after one hour of travelling on a Sunday when the traffic on Peshawar road and GT road was quite light. As we approached the airport the sight of wide approach road was reassuring. Suddenly I found a big queue of vehicles at two checkpoints which created a jam. So despite new facilities the ubiquitous traffic jam issue remained as it was on old Benazir Bhutto Airport. The new building of the airport presented a grand and spruced up look. Here at least was an international standard airport at Islamabad. As I entered the airport I beheld the red granite floor. While standing I closely examined and found chipped off edges of granite slabs, which was quite surprising as it indicated a poor workmanship. Apparently in hurry someone had compromised on workmanship. The queue for boarding pass was a horror story however. Quetta bound passengers were milling around all counters raising noises and entering in heated debate with the PIA booking staff. A plane bound for Quetta was diverted elsewhere and the Quetta flight now was at 11 pm. There was shortage of booking staff and the overworked and harried booking staff battled frequent internet breakdowns and communication problems. A seasoned staff member confided in me that due to sudden inauguration many services could not be fully developed a d especially communication equipment shortage like walkie-talkies etc was hurting the smooth operations. When I reached the booking gentleman he kept fidgeting with my ticket and his computer for good 15 minutes. After that he told me that since my ticket was economy premium and that the plane had been changed there was no premium economy and that I should contact my booking agent to upgrade my ticket to business class. The News was frustrating yet I went to another staff member and explained the problem. My travel agent meanwhile told me that since PIA ha changed the airplane to a 777 and failed to inform we needed to upgrade the ticket. I acquiesced. While this was being done suddenly the ticketing system went down with internet issues. Meanwhile I heard loud shouts by Quetta passengers who had started getting violent due to frustration. There were few counters and all overloaded with frequent computer breakdowns. Complete mayhem with harried looking booking staff and clueless coordination gentlemen presented an anachronistic scene for a newly inaugurated airport. Now when my ticketing issue was sorted out I was directed to finance desk to pay some amount. I moved around but found the finance guys absent! If I thought this was hilarious more was yet to come. The finance guy was frantically called on internet call bit the signals went down and no contact. Flight departure time meanwhile was approaching close and I was getting restless. After a tense wait of 15 minutes the cash guy sauntered in and I explained my requirement. He made few calls to get the right information as he was not aware of the ticket change dues payment procedure. After wasting a lot of time he finally informed me that there were no extra charges and that I could go. Relieved finally I dashed for Gate B1 to be precise for my inaugural flight from Islamabad Airport. After a lot of escalator movements we reached at the gate expecting to be led to the pedestrian bridge. No such luck however and this takes the cake. At the gate a forlorn yet spirited ASF guy informed us that we would have to wait for a bus to take us to the plane. I asked,”Where is the pedestrian bridge?” He replied matter of factly,”Sir, the pedestrian gate could not be operated as the Civil Aviation guy has gone away with the Key”. The passengers despite their discomfiture burst into guffaws. At least there was some redeeming feature in this disorder. Our flight took off 3xactly an hour late, nothing wrong with that since by PIA standards that was perfectly normal.
Amid all this turmoil on the airport especially on the booking counters, there was one gentleman with the name of Harish Kumar and two ladies Maria and Bushra on the counters who were a picture of equanimity and handled all irate passengers with professional courtesy and a cool head. One felt for those nice souls caught up in an impossible situation. The overall impression was such that as if someone had deliberately conspired to create confusion on the airport.
I appeal to all concerned that if due to electoral expediency the premature inauguration was necessary all facilities and requisite should have been provided at the new airport. My humble suggestion is to suspend operations there for few months to get the complete staff and facilities operative and the flight operations are conducted from the old airport till then.
S.Korea Prosecutor Ready to Indict Impeached President Ms.Park:
Pakistan Supreme Court Sits on Nawaz Sharif Panama Case Judgement
Prosecutor Pushes for Indictment of South Korean President in Samsung Scandal
FEB. 28, 2017
Ms. Park’s presidential powers have been suspended since the impeachment vote in December. The Constitutional Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks on whether she should be reinstated or formally removed from office. Even if she resumes the presidency, her five-year term ends in February, after which she can face criminal charges.
On Monday, Ms. Park’s lawyer, Yu Young-ha, rejected the special prosecutor’s findings, saying his investigation was “politically biased” and “lacking in fairness.” He called the bribery allegation “an absurd fiction.”
But on Monday, Mr. Park, the special prosecutor, who is not related to Ms. Park, said his team found enough evidence that Ms. Park and her confidante, Choi Soon-sil, conspired to collect bribes from Samsung.
On Feb. 28, heindicted Lee Jae-yong,the third-generation scion of the family that runs Samsung, on charges of giving or promising $38 million in bribes to Ms. Park and Ms. Choi. He also added a bribery charge to the case against Ms. Choi, who is already on trial.
Mr. Lee offered the bribes in return for political favors from Ms. Park, most notably government support for a merger of two Samsung affiliates in 2015 that helped him inherit corporate control of the Samsung conglomerate from his incapacitated father, Lee Kun-hee, the prosecutor said.
Acting on Ms. Park’s order, her aides forced the government-controlled National Pension Service, a major shareholder at the two Samsung companies, to vote for the merger, though it was opposed by many minority shareholders and devalued the pension fund’s own stocks there, the prosecutor said.
Photo
A protest against President Park in Seoul on Saturday. The special prosecutor also said that Ms. Park should face a criminal charge of abusing official power over a blacklist of artists.CreditJung Ui-Chel/European Pressphoto Agency
On Monday, Samsung denied the special prosecutor’s findings.
“Samsung has not paid bribes nor made improper requests seeking favors,” it said in a statement. “Future court proceedings will reveal the truth.”
On Monday, Mr. Park, the special prosecutor, said that the president should also face a criminal charge of abusing official power, saying she conspired with aides to blacklist thousands of artists, writers, and movie directors deemed unfriendly to her government and exclude them from government-funded support programs.
Ms. Park also fired three senior Culture Ministry officials who had been reluctant to discriminate against some of the 9,473 names on the list, the prosecutor said. She demoted and later fired another senior ministry official who had angered Ms. Choi, her friend, by investigating allegations of corruption involving her family, the prosecutor said.
While blackballing unfriendly artists, Ms. Park’s office ensured that pro-government civic groups received special favors, he said.
It asked the Federation of Korean Industries, which lobbies on behalf of Samsung and other big businesses, to provide $5.9 million for those groups between 2014 and 2016, the special prosecutor said. Some of those groups, like the right-wing Korea Parent Federation, have held noisy protests in downtown Seoul calling the critics of Ms. Park “commies.”
Besides Samsung, scores of other South Korean companies were found to have made payments to two foundations controlled by Ms. Choi. But on Monday, the special prosecutor did not recommend further actions against them, and state prosecutors had earlier said that those companies were coerced to donate and were not engaged in bribery.
Ms. Park has repeatedly denied any legal wrongdoing, insisting that she was framed by hostile political forces and that she was not aware of any criminal conspiracy by Ms. Choi. She said she only let Ms. Choi edit some of her speeches and run her personal errands.
On Monday, the special prosecutor said Ms. Park and Ms. Choi had 573 phone conversations between April and October last year using cell phones issued under borrowed names. Of these calls, 127 took place between September, when Ms. Choi left for Germany, and October when she returned home to be arrested.
The prosecutor accused Ms. Park of impeding his investigation. She refused to be questioned by his investigators and also did not allow them to search her office. As a result, he said his team could not fully determine what she was doing at her residence for seven hours in April 2014, when a ferry loaded with hundreds of schoolchildren sank, killing more than 300.
Ms. Park said she was working at the time, getting reports on the disaster. But she has been haunted by lurid rumors, some of them claiming that she was having a romantic encounter or undergoing plastic surgery.
On Monday, the prosecutor said a cosmetic surgeon gave Ms. Park at least five simple face-lifting operations at her residence between 2013 and 2016. Even unlicensed people visited her there to give her nutritional shots and help her with kinesiotherapy and reiki, a form of traditional healing. But investigators could not find evidence that such things took place on the day of the ferry disaster.
