Hyderabad used to have a decent civil airport with a 7054 ft long runway and regular flights to Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The airport got closed in 1998 due to losses. There was an announcement recently to reopen the airport on July 26, 2008 but the event got postponed after the runway was declared not upto-mark for commercial service yet.
In the meantime, Government of Sindh announced 10,000 posts in Police department and found a novel use for the Hyderabad Airport runway. In the photo above, candidates for police posts are seen running on the runway of Hyderabad Aiprort as part of their physical fitness test.
Photo is from July 22, 2008. Looking at the ‘jazba’ (motivation) of the runners in the photo below, a poetic verse comes to my mind:
rau meiN hai rakhsh-e-umr, kahaaN dekhiye thamay
nay haath baag par hai na paa hai rakaab meiN
Photo Credits: Farhan Khan at APP
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Come on people, Sind is a big province and the recruitment process must have been held all over. And, it must be spread over days to cater for thousands of applicants.
Hyderabad can be a departure or arrival point for flights from all over the country and not Karachi alone but its viability must have been re-assessed. Or maybe it is merely a politically motivated step!!! CAA or PIA management can give some input on this, if they are reading.
@Muhammad Qasim Pasta
Maybe they didn’t call all 10,000 on the same day.
That’s what I call improvisation.
If it was suffering losses and was essentially dead weight, I think they made the right decision to suspend operations for now. Growing up in Karachi, we used to joke about whether it made any sense for Hyderabad to even have an airport. You have to arrive ~90 minutes before your flight anyway, why not spend an extra hour and fly from Karachi instead!
10,000 posts! but it does not seem more than 1000 people in this fitness test
WOW, Runway turned into Jogging Track Kind of Story, Purely Pakistanic…Nice sharing.