Moving up: 2 PPP advisers made ministers, MQM’s adviser booted out

In Sindh the CM is allowed only five advisers.

KARACHI:

The government removed three of the chief minister’s advisers on Monday.

Two of them have been promoted to ministers while the third has been removed. Two special assistants to the chief minister have also been appointed.

Zubair Motiwala, the former investment adviser is now the chairman of the Sindh Investment Board (SIB). He will also be a minister. Earlier, the CM himself was the chairman of the board and Motiwala was its vice-chairman.

The adviser to the CM on planning and development, Kaiser Bengali, has been named head of the Sindh Development Board and he will also have the status of a minister. The third, Khawaja Izhar-ul Hassan who was with the then coalition partner, the MQM, has been removed altogether.

The changes have been made because of the 18th Amendment that restricts the government to only five advisers in a cabinet. Earlier on, there were 17 advisers in the Sindh cabinet, but a constitutional petition filed against their legal position compelled the government to remove 12 of them in January in order to bring the number down to five according to the new law.

When the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) parted ways with the government and the opposition — the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) and PML-Quaid (PML-Q) — joined the treasury benches, the government appointed four ministers and three advisers from the new coalition partners, raising the number to eight.

The portfolios that were left behind by the MQM ministers have been given to the newly appointed ministers. “After the recent appointments, the total number of the advisers reached eight, therefore these advisers have been removed to abide by the constitutional requirement,” said a spokesman for the CM.

Now, out of the five advisers Rashid Rabbani alone belongs to the Pakistan Peoples Party. The rest are with the new coalition partners. Ghulam Hussain and Noor Hussain of the PML-F are now the CM’s special assistants. The CM used to have 13 special assistants but the MQM’s Ghulam Hyder Rahu resigned when his party left the coalition. With the two new additions, there are 14 special assistants to the CM.

Motiwala explained to The Express Tribune that he had not been moved, but had been promoted to the level of a minister instead. “My top priority would be to bring the investment in energy — coal, wind and solar — sectors,” he said. “We are looking into investment for the Date Processing Plan Project at Khairpur, the Education City and the Fisheries Special Economic Zone,” he said, talking about his tenure as investment adviser.

The government has marked up 2,000 acres near Port Qasim Industrial Area for the International Special Economic Zone. The Education City, meanwhile, has already been allotted 9,000 acres while the Fisheries Special Economic Zone will get 20,000 acres in Thatta. The investment will be undertaken by Motiwala’s new charge, SIB, in collaboration with the fisheries department.

The Date Processing Plant Project at Khairpur was settled in July 30, 2010. The SIB, the Pakistan Horticulture Development Company and the agriculture department signed a memorandum of understanding for the project.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2011.