PPP Senator Sherry Rehman has said the government has ‘crashed’ the national airline – Pakistan International Airline (PIA) – over issue of degrees and certificates of pilots.

The world is calling it ‘degree-gate’. The Roosevelt Hotel, a profitable asset in PPP rule, is being sold at a nominal price, the former Pakistani ambassador to the US said on Wednesday – the day a cabinet body took up privatisation of the hotel.

The degree of deceased pilot was not unauthenticated and not all pilots have bogus degrees and certificates, Sherry said questioning why the government did not verified degrees and certificates’ of pilots after it came to power months ago .

The past governments are being blamed, she said and asked if it was being done deliberately. Why the report was not debated, she asked adding the government put the airline industry at stake and a question mark about the PIA performance.

Reports cited a PIA spokesperson as saying that fake licences is not just a PIA issue but spread across the entire Pakistani airline industry.