Flydubai Karachi flights on hold, staff safe after terrorist attack

NEW DELHI // Flydubai is waiting for the Karachi international airport to be opened up to resume operations after Sunday night's terrorist attack.

“We did not have any flights on the ground and we are watching the situation,” said Ghaith Al Ghaith, the chief executive of flydubai.

The Dubai carrier has four staff members on the ground but they are all safe. Flydubai has two flights to Karachi every day, and these were stopped as soon as the attack started, he said.

Monday morning, the Pakistan military cleared the airport of the terrorists with 29 killed in the gun fight. All 12 terrorists were killed after a 12-hour siege.

The curfew at the airport has been lifted.

“We have to ensure everything is safe to restart the operations,” said Sudhir Sreedharan, flydubai’s senior vice president for commercial operations for Indian subcontinent, Gulf and Africa regions.

ssahoo@thenational.ae

Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away

It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.

The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.

But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.

At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.

The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.

After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.

Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.

And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.

At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.

And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.

* Agence France Presse

Flydubai Karachi flights on hold, staff safe after terrorist attack

Flydubai has two flights to Karachi every day, and these were stopped as soon as the attack started.

Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away