The Planning Commission has a professional team of half a dozen media managers, having expertise in texting to electronic and social media sites to press release for the print media, but their professionalism could be gauged by the fact that they took two days to draft a mere press release for the routine meeting of the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) held on Tuesday.
The belated news release issued on Wednesday said the CDWP chaired by Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal approved seven development projects worth Rs 143.5 billion, out of which five important and significant projects were referred to ECNEC. The writer of the press release, however, omitted the mentioning of currency, causing a lot of confusion among the media-men.
It further informed that the meeting approved two major projects worth Rs 2.6 billion out of the eight projects of Higher Education Commission. One was worth Rs 486 million the National Center for Artificial Intelligence, which the minister said would be rationalised to Rs 200 million. He said the project would help to produce better teachers. The project will be completed within 36 months.
The rest of the press release was best to be ignored, as it was difficult to understand. Usually, the official statement informs about the total number of projects approved, their cost, and foreign assistance, details of projects, completion time and impact. The statement can be written only by a competent person and is duly checked by senior officers before being released. However, this time, even after a lapse of 48 hours the procedure could not be efficiently performed.
An official source said that initially, professionals were inducted in the Planning Commission but they were given only a year’s contract, which was later on extended due to the bureaucratic pressures. The Planning Commission had started a young development fellow program under which youngsters and professionals were hired in the media department, DevCom.
Their contract was for a one year period and the establishment division refused any further extension, claiming it was against the defined objectives of the DevCom project as well as would raise audit objections. It resulted in the leaving of all the professionals who had earlier opted for the department. Now the commission has hired a new set of people but they were not well qualified to write economic press statements.
An official of the Press Information Department (PID) said on the condition of anonymity that the department had deputed several competent officers to the Planning Commission but the minister, as always, preferred his own professional team. Later on, the Planning Commission regretted over the faulty press release and withdrew it.
