Anomalies In Biman Hiring: Probe report not yet submitted despite HC order

Even though the civil aviation authorities were ordered by the High Court last August to submit a probe report on Biman's pilot recruitment anomalies within a month, they showed up in court yesterday empty-handed.

The authorities requested time until the end of February to submit the report.

Meanwhile, a probe body formed earlier by Biman Bangladesh was halted in its track despite having made considerable progress.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines in February 22, 2022, recruited a batch of 14 contractual pilots to fly its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

In August last year, a bench of Justice JBM Hasan and Justice Razik-Al-Jalil had ordered the civil aviation ministry to launch an investigation into the allegations of anomalies in this recruitment.

The order was issued following a hearing on a writ petition filed by Md Tanvir Ahmed after The Daily Star published a report titled "Biman paying for hiring unqualified Boeing 777 pilots" on March 1.

The newspaper had found that two first officers had faked their certificates and only five of the 14 pilots recruited were qualified to fly, while the rest failed their type-rating exams multiple times.

After the writ petition hearing, the HC had ordered that a three-member committee, comprised of an additional secretary from the civil aviation and tourism ministry and a high official each from Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) and Biman, be formed.

On October last year, the ministry appointed additional secretary Muhammad Ashraf Ali, Director of Flight Safety at CAAB Group Captain Md Mukit-ul-Alam Miah and Biman's Chief of Flight Safety Captain Enamul Haque Talukdar as members of the probe committee. 

After having met only four times since then, the committee asked for another month to submit its report. The bench then gave them one week to report with an update.

Following this newspaper's March 1 report, Biman on March 6 had formed its own three-member investigation committee.

While it saw considerable progress and were also preparing a draft probe report, it was stopped in its tracks on October 18.

A letter sent to the committee from the administration department stated that since the HC had ordered a probe, their committee is being cancelled.

On the other hand, Captain Enamul Haque Talukdar, who was also in the now-disbanded probe body formed by Biman, was removed from the ministry-appointed committee on January 14.

He was replaced by Captain Tasmin Doza, chief of training in Biman.

A letter issued by the aviation ministry stated that it was done because Doza is "superior in responsibility and relatively senior" compared to Talukdar.

This change came months after the deadline for submitting the probe report had passed.