Central Operational Committee to prevent contraband’s movement at airports

ISLAMABAD, May 19 (APP): Adviser to the Prime Minister on Aviation Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan Abbasi Friday approved formation of a Central Operational Committee (COC) in order to ensure preventing movement of narcotic and contraband items besides foolproof security at all airports in the country.
Chairing a high level meeting here, he approved formation of the committee, headed by Director General Civil Aviation and comprising high officials of all concerned departments including ANF, Customs, Airport Security Force and PIA, and several other measures to improve efficiency of the aviation division, a press release said.
Among others, PIA Chairman and Secretary Aviation Division Irfan Ilahi, Director General Civil Aviation Authority Air Marshal (Retd) Asim Suleman, Director General Anti-Narcotics Force Major General Musarat Nawaz Malik, Director General Airport Security Force Major General Ali Abbas Haider, Acting Chief Executive Officer PIA Naayer Hayat, Chief Collector Custom, Security Chief PIA Brigadier (Retd) Muhammad Asif Khan and senior officials attended the meeting.
The meeting was held in the wake of reported recovery of narcotics from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight PK-785 at the Heathrow airport, London.
The meeting decided to hire services of eminent legal experts for the Aviation’s Prosecution Wing to ensure effective perusal of legal cases in the court of law.
In past, Sardar Methab said such incidents were dumped, allowing blacksheep to flee.
He resolved that such acts would not be tolerated or ignored at any cost in future and “we are very concerned to find out the culprits involved in this reported disgraceful act and the accused will be brought to book soon.”
He said the reported incident of narcotics recovery was regrettable as it was the matter of country’s integrity and prestige.
He said the Aviation Division was determined to uplift the standards of PIA and regain its past glory, for which state of the art technology was being installed at airports.
Sardar Mehtab stressed that there should be a strong mechanism to hold impartial inquiries in such cases and keep a proper record of accused and their networks but “to fulfill this dream; we need to ensure the fastest systems of investigation heading towards accountability of involved factors.”
During the meeting, the adviser was briefed that no official intimation was made by the British authorities yet about narcotics recovery from the PIA plane in London.
The meeting suggested ban on entry of irrelevant persons in the engineering section of all airports, while the activities of the workers should be monitored with the help of CCTV cameras and biometric system.
It was also decided that to minimize the security issues, all planes should be thoroughly checked by the departments concerned after their maintenance to avoid security issues.
The ANF officials informed that the Narcotics Force was actively keeping an eye on illegal activities of narcotics smuggling all over the country, besides a mechanism was in place to check cargoes appropriately.