Civil Aviation Authority imposed a recent condition on all passengers traveling through any airport in Pakistan to wrap their check-in luggage with plastic bags or sheets. Despite the use of plastic is much reprehended worldwide, CAA’s move seemed illogical. The official notifications said, “All check-in baggage of international and domestic passengers is to be wrapped with plastic sheets at the initial stage of scanning at search counters of the ASF, ANF, and Customs.”.
Calling it as an added layer to protect the baggage, the decision of the authority was soon withdrawn after much criticism on social media. The decision was said to be taken as a compliance objective to meet the level of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), but unfortunately, it backfired, as various passengers mocked the decision on social media and some even called it a legalized form of corruption.
Another official statement was issued by the authority to withdraw the first one which said, “The letter under reference is to be treated as canceled ab initio with immediate effect. Any correspondence made in furtherance of the referred latter is also required to be canceled,”.
Critics strongly condemned the useless decision taken by the authority and raised many questions related to the overall performance of the CAA to maintain the level of security and general maintenance of the airport premises. From security check which uses old school equipment to detect arms and ammunition to the cleanliness and standard of sanitation in the public toilets of the airports, a big question mark was put on the performance of CAA. Various other issues including the availability of immediate medical assistance in case of emergency, sluggish processing of passengers specially travelling abroad, scarcity of porters and trolleys, quality and price of food available at the premises, lack of trained staff to deal with general queries and complaints etc. were also highlighted, which need to be addressed on priority by the authority.
