'We are not available'.

Hardly a few hours after the tragic crash of a PIA plane on May 22, 2020, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, the Minister of Civil Aviation, had begun to drop heavy hints, strongly suggesting as if the pilot was exclusively responsible for it. He kept rubbing in the same story while talking about the incident during a national assembly sitting three weeks ago.

To be fair to him, however, he deserves full acknowledgement for fulfilling the promise of presenting the initial report of the probe, related to this accident before the national assembly. The previous governments had surely been resorting to hush-hush tactics to make us forget and forgive, even about some very high profile and mind-boggling incidents of plane crashing.

But the report, he delivered during the Wednesday sitting, hardly revealed any thing new. Whatever he stated had already gone viral on our social media. It may sound pretty odd. Yet the fact remains that to hold the pilot exclusively responsible for the plane crash in Karachi, a US-based 'expert' took a highly visible lead in narrative building via a series of videos, specifically designed for YouTube. That surely reminded one the influence of mega-firms, associated with manufacturing of the famous brands of passenger planes, with instinctive suspicions of a reporter.

A jack-of-all-trades kind of journalist is definitely not qualified to put valid sounding questions about the report, Sarwar Khan has presented in the house Wednesday. I will still not stop myself from reminding him that being the minister of Civil Aviation, he also represented a brand called PIA. He should have employed carefully drafted language to protect some its reputation.

Most ministers of the Imran government feel too proud for developing the capacity of speaking without a PARCHI (notes, talking points etc.). Sarwar Khan would hate to sound different and with absolute confidence of a self-taught 'expert,' he kept bad mouthing PIA. Pilots of this airline remained the major target of his extempore ire.

For another time, he kept stressing that many of pilots in Pakistan, 262 out of around 800, were flying planes after acquiring 'fake degrees' and license to fly by employing doubtful means. Lost in details remains the fact, however, that only four pilots, flying the PIA-run planes these days were still suspected in the given context.

The minister did not accuse the unfortunate pilot of the crashed plane for holding 'spurious credentials'. But he clearly accused him...