A good riddance, long overdue

The mere change of guards will not be enough; in fact, it has a way of skirting any accountability exercise in regard to past misdeeds and their author. It often amounted to letting wrong doers off the hook.

The government still has one year of its tenure left and that's enough time to address the problems that Biman is facing, or a least to make some determined efforts to bring things back to order. The national airline has been incurring heavy losses and it is left in dire straits now. Regrettably, at a time when other airlines are expanding their business, Biman is finding it increasingly difficult to keep itself afloat. It's fighting a losing battle with corruption and mismanagement, strident trade unionism, anomalies in purchases, poor passenger service and a host of other problems that have turned it into a national liability. The airline has lost reliability due to its failure to maintain schedules. And as far as aircraft purchase is concerned, experts are pretty much convinced that many wrong decisions were taken in the past. This is something that only added to the predicament of a losing concern.

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A number of suggestions have been put forward to regain the commercial viability of the national airline. But nothing tangible has been done so far to achieve that goal. Biman has not yet found a strategic partner, nor does it enjoy the operational freedom considered to be the foremost condition for success in the highly competitive aviation industry.

All things considered, we would like to say this: now that a new minister is saddled, we want a task force constituted to go into the entire gamut of Biman affairs -- manpower, management, purchases, fleet inventory, maintenance status, route mapping, flight operations, ground services etc. -- and submit a comprehensive report on their findings to the prime minister. Let it be made public subsequently.