Secretary General to President: Faruqui to help implement government's policy decisions

Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Salman Faruqui's appointment as Secretary General to President Asif Ali Zardari has strengthened the President House and made clear to all and sundry that any direction from the hilltop must be implemented in letter and in spirit, bureaucratic and administrative circles told Business Recorder on Monday.
They said that Salman Faruqui, as Secretary-General would have the status and privileges of a minister of state. As a close confidante of President Zardari, Salman Faruqui would prevail upon the entire Federal and provincial top bureaucracy and help implement the government's policy decision, they added.
Salman Faruqui replaced unassuming Saleem Mehmood, who was working as the Principal Secretary to the President. In the present Pakistan People's Party government, two former bureaucrats, Rehman Malik and Salman Faruqui, are playing the role of catalyst. Both are beneficiaries of President Musharraf's controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) of October 5, 2007.
Soft-spoken Faruqui has the reputation of a hard taskmaster, imaginative, innovative and loyal to his profession and the employer. It may be recalled that in 1998 on the directive of Saifur Rehman's detested Ehtesab Cell, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had arrested Salman Faruqui, who had held top positions in various key ministries in the previous governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, on charges of corruption and misuse of authority.
Faruqui, in the previous Nawaz Sharif government, was the secretary of the ministry of communication and the famous yellow cab scheme was his brainchild, which helped Pakistan Muslim League (N) to win over a substantial vote bank in 1997 general elections in major urban centres of the country.