As Tania made SAPM on digital Pakistan, cabinet swells to 47

ISLAMABAD: With the induction of Tania Aidrus as special assistant to the prime minister on Digital Pakistan, the federal cabinet has swelled to 47 members.

Of them, there are 25 federal ministers, four ministers of state, five advisers and 13 special assistants.

Apart from them, there are 36 parliamentary secretaries who, though not members of the federal cabinet, do enjoy a number of perks and privileges having financial implications. Naeemul Haq, who passed away a few weeks back, and Iftikhar Durrani, who has been sacked, were also special assistants. The number of special assistants is going up at a time when such appointments have been challenged in the Islamabad High Court (IHC). Questions have been raised by the judge on their chairing federal ministries.

A petition has requested the IHC to order the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to conduct inquiries against the special assistants. It stated that according to rule 4 (6) of Business Rules of 1973, the prime minister has the authority to appoint special assistants but to give them the status of federal ministers or state ministers is against the law. It claims that the appointment of special assistants is not made under Article 92 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

Separately, the appointment of Syed Zulfiqar Abbas Bukhari, popularly known as Zulfi Bukhari, as chairman of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC), has also been disputed in the IHC. Before her elevation, Tania Aidrus was the head of the Digital Pakistan Vision campaign. She has worked at Google and had been invited by Prime Minister Imran Khan to head the Digital Pakistan campaign. She has already given a roadmap for Digital Pakistan listing five key areas to be prioritised by the government. The areas included access and connectivity, digital infrastructure, e-government, digital skills and training, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Tania Aidrus’s nomination comes at a time when the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) comprising digital media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon and Apple has spoken out against the new regulations approved by the government for social media, threatening to suspend services in Pakistan if the rules were not revised.

In a letter, penned to the prime minister, the AIC called on the government to revise the new sets of rules and regulations for social media. The rules as currently written would make it extremely difficult for AIC members to make their services available to Pakistani users and businesses, reads the communication, referring to the Citizens Protection Rules (Against Online Harm).

The AIC said that the regulations were causing “international companies to re-evaluate their view of the regulatory environment in Pakistan, and their willingness to operate in the country.” It referred to the rules as “vague and arbitrary in nature”, and said that they were forcing it to go against established norms of user privacy and freedom of expression.

In the meantime, a majority of special assistants has been extraordinarily active and conspicuous with their presence in the print and electronic media while a couple of them are hardly noticeable anywhere marking that they are holding the cabinet positions.

Little is known about Shahzad Syed Qasim, who is special assistant for Coordination of Marketing and Development of Mineral Resources. Then, there is Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind, who is special assistant for activities pertaining to Ministries of Water Resources, Power and Petroleum in Balochistan.

On the other hand, special assistants like Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, Shahzad Akbar, Dr Sania Nishter, Ali Nawaz Awan, Dr Zafar Mirza, Zulfi Bukhari, Nadim Afzal Chan and Usman Dar are seen on daily basis, projecting the government policies in their respective spheres.