China airline begins weekly flights to Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: China Southern Airlines has launched a direct flight from Wuhan city to Islamabad on every Monday, it was learnt on Wednesday.

The first flight, Boeing 787, departed with 143 passengers carrying 12 tonnes of goods, including communication devices and medical equipment arrived in Islamabad.

In line with the current COVID-19 prevention and control measures, passengers of direct regular commercial flights from Pakistan to China are required to complete nucleic acid tests and produce certificates with negative results.

In a separate development, the management of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has taken action against 43 employees during the month of November on various charges of possessing fake degrees, disobedience, unauthorised disclosure of official information and others.

The human resources department of the national carrier took action against 43 more employees on different charges, which includes termination of services of 28 workers. The PIA HR department also released the list of the employees who have faced action ater going through “transparent and unbiased” inquiries.

The services of four employees were terminated for possessing fake education degrees and eight for prolonging unauthorised absence from their duties. The services of four more employees were ended over receiving bribes from customer and contractor and two for the disclosure of official information.

For their alleged involvement in fraud, three employees were terminated, two for thet and destruction of the official record and one for smuggling.

Moreover, four employees were demoted over charges of ‘disobedience’ and refusal to carry out lawful order issued by the management and salaries of three employees were reduced to the lower pay scale for “insubordination.”

The PIA management issued leters of displeasure and caution to eight employees, whereas, eight workers were cleared in the inquiries against them.