Biman - a bottomless basket
Imran Ahmed Sarkar, Singapore
This refers to your editorial of 6 September. While agreeing to most of the contents, I am not sure why you are pleading to save Biman. It's almost like the government's scheme of rewarding the criminals with an opportunity to change the colours of their money to white. Your editorial does not tell about getting those criminals on the docks or establishing accountability of poor taxpayers' money. Putting more money into Biman's basket will not solve its problems; looters and unions always remove the basket bottom.Do we have to have a National Carrier? At this cost? Whose purpose will it serve ? Lots of people are making lots of money using Biman. It's no secret. Pumping in more money would be a waste. It's time we deregulate our aviation sector. Just look at our neighbour India, the aviation sector has taken off with a BANG after deregulation. State owned carriers announced reforms to stay in the race. Indian private sector airlines have ordered more than two hundred aircraft so far. It has grown at such a pace that they had to hire hundreds of resources like pilots / engineers from overseas. Our private sectors are dynamic too. Our RMG/ knitting/ textiles, ceramics and pharmaceutical industries have shown that we can do it. Our telecom sector has probably revolutionised the way we do business today. It's overall contribution to our GDP is staggering. We can do it with the aviation sector as well. Our biggest asset is we have a very hard working young work force. What we need is the CORRUPT government to stay away from it. Aviation is not about shuttling passengers only, aircraft maintenance business has a huge potential as well. With our young and cost effective work force we can offer very competitive services. Biman could have excelled in this specialised sector, but the looters took away everything. For the records - Biman's biggest expenditure is its aircraft maintenance. That's where the newly infused funds will go. Vultures are already screaming for their unpaid bills! What we need is a reformed New Biman. We may even consider changing its name. It has lost its brand value. It has an adverse negative image. A business savvy management is the call of the day. It has to be restructured to have a sensible aircraft-employee ratio. The recruitment policy has to be streamlined. Can we do all these under government ownership? Probably not. I am sure foreign carriers will show interest if it's privatised. They stayed away from the government offer when it intended to retain the majority share. Do it now. Privatise it. Do not spend my money to fill looters' coffers.
| 
