RAWALPINDI/PESHAWAR:
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi on Thursday announced a 13-member provincial cabinet, comprising 10 ministers, two advisors and one special assistant.
According to Express News, the cabinet members include Meena Afridi, Arshad Ayub Khan, Amjad Ali, Aftab Alam Khan, Fazal Shakoor Khan, Khaliqur Rehman, Riaz Khan, Syed Fakhar Jehan and Aqibullah Khan.
Muzzammil Aslam and Taj Muhammad have been appointed as advisors to the prime minister, while Shafi Jan will act as special assistant to the prime minister.
The summary of the new cabinet members was received at the Governor’s Chamber, where Governor Faisal Karim Kundi signed the document.
The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. on Friday (today) at the Governor’s House.
Earlier in the day, Afridi said he was not allowed to meet PTI founding president and jailed former prime minister Imran Khan after police stopped him at the Dahgal checkpoint on Adiala Road and prevented him from proceeding until the time allotted for the meeting expired.
“Once again court orders were not respected. The Constitution and the law are being trampled,” he said during a press conference, adding that his party will hold a meeting to decide the next course of action.
The prime minister criticized the federal government’s management of security and domestic policy and questioned why terrorists had been allowed to “regroup in Pakistan”.
“Every person in KP is wondering why terrorists have settled here again,” he said, urging that the province be included in discussions on national security policy. “If we are included in national politics, we will respect the security forces and the federal government,” Afridi said.
The KP chief minister said he had received instructions from the party founder on the formation of the cabinet and that initially 10 members would be appointed to the provincial cabinet.
He regretted that they were not allowed to meet the founder of the party. “We wrote to Punjab and the federal government. The court granted permission to our petition, but we were denied access through constitutional and legal means,” he said.
On governance issues, Afridi criticized federal institutions and policies. He accused the auditor general’s office of being involved in a mega corruption scandal, called for the urgent hiring of teachers and lecturers to address the shortage and questioned why the federal government had not convened the National Finance Commission despite pressing problems in the province. “KP is being deprived of its rights and participation in development,” he said.
Afridi said KP had been denied his due rights.
“If soldiers are dying, they are also children of the nation, we mourn them. If civilians die due to wrong policies, we mourn them too,” he said, warning against “decisions behind closed doors.”
The KP Prime Minister explained that by “decisions behind closed doors” he understood that matters should not be decided between two or three people. “How can you make policy without the prime minister of a province?” he asked.
Afridi criticized what he called inconsistent approaches in counter-terrorism operations, describing KP as “not a laboratory” for experimental policies and warning that the people of the province were not “sheep or insects” to be treated as test subjects.
