THIS refers to the article `Vilifying workers` (Feb 11) by Khurram Husain. It is indeed surprising to find the writer agreeing wholeheartedly with PIA`s external auditors` diagnosis of what alls the airline.

A former CFO of PIA concurs, adding that the problem was not the number of employees per se, but rather their intransigence and `the numerous rackets that the workers` were involved in.

Just as socioeconomic indicators attest to the progress of a country, industry standards enable the assessment of the health of firms operating in various sectors.

An important measure of efficiency and profitability in the airline industry, for example, is the employee-to-aircraf t ratio.

In PIA, this is about four times the industry average, and rising, as more and more old and unsafe aircraft are taken out of service.

Under the circumstances it is suicidal to continue to retain a bloated worl(force at the same time as the number of aircraft in operation, and consequently revenues, decline.

The blow to revenues was the logical and not wholly-unexpected outcome of the ill-advised sale of `routes and landing rights to other airlines without pressing for reciprocal rights`. These are after all the lifelines for any successful airline.

In their absence it is unrealistic to expect PIA to increase revenues, especially as the burden of financing the ever-increasing accumulated losses of about Rs300 billion makes it difficult, if not impossible, to raise funds required to expand and modernise the fleet, a prerequisite for increasing revenues.

Asad Siddiqi Lahore