KARACHI:
During the recent Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) meeting, the ECC approved the salaries of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) employees, which has not been operational for years now. In fact, only a few weeks ago assets worth Rs10 billion were stolen from PSM premises. It is worth mentioning that no action was taken to recover those assets.
In addition, the cancelled licenses of three oil and gas exploration companies were restored. Their licenses were previously cancelled because they had not conducted any exploration work on their blocks in 15 years and had not paid their dues to the government. There were no subsequent reports of the recovery of dues from the three companies.
Given that the country is experiencing an economic downturn, it is surprising to see the finance minister allocating resources arbitrarily to non-functional companies and organisations. Even if the government has allocated resources to rehabilitate these organisations, it must keep a check on their activities to ensure profitability. Pakistan is already facing a scarcity of resources, which is expected to worsen given the global economic upheavals. Therefore, the relevant government departments must be careful with the use of the country’s resources.
Shahryar Khan
Peshawar
Published in The Express Tribune, November 5th, 2022.
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