Imran gives reporter dressing down for prying

Media persons walk out of PTI chief’s news conference in protest

PESHAWAR:

In the first public appearance since his highly publicised split with Reham Khan, Imran Khan had a few words of advice for the media: stop prying into personal lives of public figures. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman on Tuesday slapped down a reporter who questioned his ability to judge people around him.

At a news conference in Peshawar, the reporter had poked Imran on his supposed inability to judge people while selecting his close aides in either political or private life because whoever he selected ditched him in the end.

Imran lost his temper and attacked the journalist instead of replying to the query. “Every society has some form of etiquettes. Every individual has some dignity or some manners,” he chided the reporter.

Imran said the journalist should be ashamed of asking questions about someone’s personal life. “In many households,” he added, “people go through painful trauma. By asking such a question, you have not embarrassed me but rather shown your auqaat (worth).”

Imran’s reaction upset the audience, especially the media persons who left the room in protest.

While the question might have been an ill-directed jibe at last week’s divorce announcement, the PTI chief has indeed been left in a lurch by many of his trusted lieutenants over the years.



The latest and the most high-profile ditch came only last year during the party’s massive Islamabad sit-in in a bid to overthrow the government. Javed Hashmi, then PTI president, left the protest movement just days after it started, accusing the party leadership of taking directions from ‘somewhere else’.

Healthcare services

Imran announced the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government would turn all public hospital into autonomous institutions to improve the services provided.

He said the state-run hospitals had failed to deliver. Approximately 10 million people visit these hospitals every year but they get poor health services due to the absence of doctors, he said.

He warned a group of doctors, who have taken a court stay against Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015, saying the government would fight against them till the proper implementation of the law.

The PTI chief said his party workers would arrange demonstrations outside the residences of protesting doctors and compel them to accept this law. He also requested the Peshawar High Court chief justice to decide the case in favour of the local population.

Addressing the media at the Chief Minister House, he said his visit was aimed at checking the hospital system in the province and to share the actual ground situation.

He admitted the healthcare system was not working properly and the government has decided to hand over all the administrative powers to the hospitals’ boards of governors.

Imran said a new building at the Lady Reading Hospital had been under-construction for seven years and was still not complete after costing Rs7 billion. The Shaukat Khanam Hospital was build within three years at a cost of Rs3 billion.


Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2015.