Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-N Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb has warned the government against making what she believes ‘billions in commission’ over rebranding Shehbaz Sharif’s E-Learning Program and shamelessly re-launching it as Imran Khan’s vision.

Addressing a press conference at the National Press Club, she said the government had been following a set pattern since day-one of its imposition on Pakistan. She said that this pattern was demonizing projects of development and public welfare set up by the PMLN government, shutting them down over baseless allegations, rebranding the same projects and re-launching the PMLN projects as PTI projects.

She said that right after Eid, the Punjab government was mulling over the launch of E-schooling and E-learning program in Punjab. And even before that, the ‘E-government’ which only exists on social media, tweeted from Imran’s handle e-library as Imran Khan’s vision. She told how advertisement companies were called in on first day of Eid and were briefed on this rebranded-relaunching and were directed to prepare ad campaigns worth billions of rupees.

She showed how some companies had already submitted the ad campaigns by the title of ‘Reforming Punjab’ which she said was a ridiculous preposition about Usman Buzdar who isn’t even competent enough to clear Lahore’s trash. She said that this would also be against the decision of the court which had prohibited any such ad campaign by the government with public money.

But she said that a government that had already blatantly committed contempt of court by prohibiting Shehbaz Sharif from traveling to England, did not care about the respect, sanctity or honour of the courts. She said that this E-Learning program was launched by Shehbaz Sharif in 2014 and completed in 2018, under which over one million books were made available online, where resource material was transformed into e-learning material and where e-libraries were set up for 20 districts of Punjab.

From nursery to grade 12, all syllabus had been converted to E-books. This included E-Library, E-Rozgar, E-Internship, E-Smart school, I-pads and laptops provision, technology park, digital programs, millions of digitized books, she said. She said that the government was now gearing up to make billions of corruption and commission money over this relaunching.

She said that they extort billions on ring-road realignment, extort billions on orange train completion, billions on inaugurating roads and motorways already built by Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif, extorting billions on electricity projects even after criticizing them. She said the PTI criticizes the electricity generation projects but doesn’t shut them down and makes billions on extorting them.

The PMLN leader said that the PTI was so shameless and lazy that they didn’t even change the 20 districts where Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the E-Libraries. “Imran Khan’s vision can best be summed up as ‘E-Lying’. He, his cabinet, his rented spokespersons speak tens of blatant lies every single day on E-media and then forget about it,” she said, adding E-10 million jobs, E-5 million houses, E-IMF free economy, E-accountability commission on sugar, flour, medicines, electricity, gas, LNG, ring-road but don’t act on any of it.

She said that despite burying the country under Rs 14,000 billion debt the government had not laid a single brick of any new scheme and had been shamelessly rebranding and relaunching all the development and welfare projects started by PMLN from the Sehat Card to this latest commission minting excercize over already completed e-learning.