My compliments to PIA management for its commitment to its redesignated role of providing jobs without vacancies, a novel methodology that does not involve the tedious task of advertising for vacancies and adherence to laid down criteria such as federally allocated quotas, minimum qualifications, age, domicile etc. The airline, having regularised jobs of over 7,500 daily wagers that were hired without any regard to procedures, tests, academic qualifications, security clearance, or regional quotas for people of Balochistan, FATA, Pakhtun Frontier, Seraiki belt, has hired another batch of over 80 pilots. This, despite having 66 under training pilots on its payrolls since 2006, who are yet to fly. PIA has now decided to regularise over 800 daily wagers hired in the last 8 months. Obviously the share of Baloch youth has not been breached since this is not a regular employment procedure and the PPP is only fulfilling its election promises to regularise all contractual employees. The people of Balochistan are cribbing but what difference does that make? The national airline, which in yesteryears served customers, is now a recruitment agency for mediocrity. It lacks credibility, has no place for integrity, nor merit a criteria here. In the process if an aircraft skids while landing on the Lahore runway, or on a clear sunny day, a Jumbo almost crashes to tail-land at Lahore, or numerous other unreported incidents like that take place, it really does not matter. After all serving revenue paying passengers honestly is no longer the yardstick for performance in PIA. The national airline accumulated losses of over 70 billions but the same year, the whole of its management was found visiting Paris Air Show, ostensibly to bail out 'poor aircraft manufacturers' like Boeing and Airbus at the cost of our taxpayer. -RASHID ORAKZAI, Quetta, via e-mail, June 28.