Government to probe Gulf Air over claims of waste

MPs expressed their concerns about the burden the company was becoming on the national budget and the probe has been called for by a cross section of MPs, who said that one year was given to Gulf Air officials to solve problems, but claim nothing has changed.

"They come to us every time and say things are improving, but we have not seen anything yet," parliament financial and economic affairs committee vice-chairman Abdulhaleem Murad, who is spearheading the probe request, was reported as saying.

"The probe will look into losses, the money the government has pumped in and how it has been spent."

"We want to make sure that the tenders for 24 jets the company was planning to buy until 2016 was being done according to profit and need.

"MPs are also not sure about the way tenders have been issued for Airbus jets' maintenance for a period of three years.

"We want to make sure that the identity change is serving the company as officials claim, since we have not seen developments."

Mr Murad claimed they were probing corruption.

"We see huge amounts being paid for consultancy, but do not know how the reports are helping the company."

He said that MPs were also concerned with the airline's employment policies such as the pay packages for top officials, which he claimed were higher than leading airlines.

"There are many expatriate employees being hired, while qualified Bahrainis are not being utilised. The airline has not yet come up with a clear policy to Bahrainise jobs," he claimed.

Mr Murad said that they would also probe the company's early retirement policy.
"There are claims of favouritism and hopefully we will uncover the truth. These exist because of weak internal auditing and finance monitoring, which we will look into."