Special Assistant to PM on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan Friday said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was a real national leader who had taken several long-term initiatives for bettterment of future generations Addressing workers of Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), she said that during the past 70 years, heads of previous government took decisions on political expediencies.
She said previous governments used to make short-term policies to cash them in next elections but Imran Khan had been taking decisions, not for political gains but for the betterment of the future generations. "Prime Minister Imran Khan has a reform agenda to make future of the coming generations bright and national institutions would be strengthened under the reform agenda," she said.
She invited the opposition to sit with the government and formulate a long-term economic reform programme to address economic challenges of the country. She said the government and the opposition should jointly make efforts for the progress and development of the country.
The Special Assistant urged the opposition to play a positive and constructive role, instead of creating uncertainty and instability in the country. She said the previous rulers destroyed the country's economy, bringing it under the heavy debt burden but now they were giving advices for its improvement.
She said people had expectations with the parliament and politicians had a responsibility to respond to the challenges, faced by the nation. She said that masses were close to the heart of Prime Minister Imran Khan and she had never seen such a pro-people leader in her entire political career.
Dr Firdous said when she took charge as special assistant, the Prime Minister affirmed that restructuring and strengthening of institution, related to provision of information, was the top most priority of the government. She said that APP was a national institution and a strong and effective APP was in the best interest of the country.
She said that APP was an effective tool to dispel the negative image of Pakistan in the world and project its true image. She said that in the past, recruitment on political grounds, badly affected the national institutions. Dr Firdous said that Prime Minister Imran Khan intended to make APP a model institution and all steps would be taken to make it a modern, digitalized institution which could compete with all international news agencies.
Stressing APP workers to fulfil their responsibilities with hard work, she gave assurance that all their genuine demands had been accepted. She said that there should be no confrontation between the management and workers and added consultations were sole option to resolve these issues. The government believed in economic empowerment of the women, and measures to this effect were also being taken, she said adding women should be provided equal opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities in every sector.
The SAPM said that the government was aware of the problems of media workers as discontent among them, affected not only their lives but the entire social fabric. She said the media workers will be made part of the present government's flagship programme Health Card scheme and Naya Pakistan Housing Programme and their lists would be collected from press clubs and other representative media organization would become its partner.
Later, chairing a high level meeting at APP Headquarter, she said that all genuine demands of the APP employees union had been accepted. She called for better working relationship between the management and workers. The meeting was also attended by Secretary Information and Broadcasting Shafqat Jalil.
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