AFTER months of wrangling over the fate of PIA, a special parliamentary committee in Islamabad finally made a significant breakthrough on Wednesday when the government and opposition agreed on a draft (after revisions) of the PIAC (Conversion) Bill 2016.

For some time, it had seemed that an accord might be very long in coming, given the government’s ham-fisted tactics and the opposition parties’ tendency to exploit such situations for political mileage.

Matters are still not entirely settled, with the opposition linking their vote to the withdrawal of termination of employment notices issued to a dozen PIA workers blamed for bringing the airline’s operations to a halt in February.

They demand that this issue be settled during the joint sitting of parliament scheduled for April 11. But the fact that an agreement has been reached is encouraging in itself, and shows that consensus-building is possible.

This ought to have been the route taken by the government from the outset, rather than trying to push through a midnight ordinance, sparking off a strike, and then attempting to railroad the bill through the legislature.

Having come this far, some questions naturally arise. If the bill will not allow strategic divestment, or management control to pass on to a private entity, what exactly is its purpose?

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who brokered the accord, should use the occasion of the April 11 vote on the bill to lay out in detail what the government’s plans for PIA really are.

There is no space for rhetoric regarding the government’s good intentions about restoring the national carrier to its lost glory. He needs to make clear what the targets are going forward, exactly what the road map is, and how this bill is useful and necessary to get there.

Otherwise, the government will risk divestment of shares just to raise money; and without any strategic changes in management, it will be business as usual at PIA. Divestment must not be an exercise to buy some more time and push the tough decisions on restructuring the corporation further into the future.

There is no doubt that something has to give within PIA as it is managed and organised at the moment. And while it is good that both the government and opposition can see this, it is also true that they seem to be only focusing on setting and meeting conditions.

They need to get beyond this point and start to agree on what must be done by the airline to ensure that its days of sinking into losses are permanently left behind.

After all, PIA is not the only state-owned behemoth that has been running into epic losses, with an uncertain future. The Pakistan Steel Mills and Pakistan Railways are also examples.

Tough decisions and consensus-building are needed immediately to address the problem.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2016