Digitising Pakistan crucial for the youth, says PM Imran

ISLAMABAD: Digitising Pakistan is crucial for the youth as the country as exciting times are ahead of the country, said Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday during the inauguration ceremony of the 'Digital Pakistan' campaign. 

 ‘Digital Pakistan’ campaign is a part of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s digitisation programme aimed at introducing the latest technologies for public welfare.The ceremony was held at the Prime Minister's Office in Islamabad. 

"The world has been taking great strides in digitisation. However, Pakistan has been lagging behind," said the prime minister. "Unfortunately Pakistan has lagged  behind due to corruption."

He said that  through such measures as the digitisation programme, Pakistan would make use of its youth population which was one of the biggest in the world. 

"Women can also secure jobs through digitisation. It helps in curbing corruption and is crucial for accountability," he said. 

The prime minister said that corruption always began from the top and now that a government that did not tolerate it was in place, Pakistan will see better days. 

"When I took over the reins as prime minister, there was hardly any department which was not in loss," he said. "I wanted to divert my energies towards other areas but as prime minister I was forced to focus only on the current account deficit. Now, the economy has stabilised," he added.  

Prime Minister Imran said that when he was elected prime minister, he said in his first speech 'Ghabrana Nahi Hai'. 

"Many people panicked after that speech," he said, as the audience laughed. "Now I am telling you not to panic because we are headed in the right direction."

The prime minister said that international agencies were appreciating Pakistan's fiscal and economic policies. 

The Digital Pakistan campaign was executed by the Ministry of Information and Technology (MoIT). The MoIT was tasked with digitising all correspondence between government offices.

The IT ministry had been told to complete the task within three months.

In September, senior PTI leader Jahangir Tareen had announced that the government had engaged a senior former Google executive to help revamp its payment system and set into motion the digitisation initiative from PMO.

He said that the government had persuaded the Google executive, who was in Singapore, to lead the project from Pakistan,  after a lot of effort and headhunting.

“She is leaving Google. In fact, she has left it and she is moving to Pakistan and will lead the digitisation initiative from PMO,” Tareen had said.