I WISH to express my disappointment on the resignation of Tania Aidrus, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Digital Pakistan. The reasons cited by her is the controversy of her dual nationality. However, insiders point out that there are other reasons.

One opinion is that she was asked to resign almost under duress by top bureaucrats who insisted that there was conflict of interest owing to the non-profit Digital Pakistan foundation that she had registered with Securities Exchange Commission Pakistani Ms Aidrus had been clarifying the fact that the foundation was absolutely non-profit and formed to attract top professionals at competitive salaries to work on the Digital Pakistan projects without charging anything to the exchequer. The funding to run the foundation was promised by various donor agencies and the diaspora interested to see Pakistan taking a leap in digitisation. She was on the board but had resigned many months ago when the issue of conflict of interest was raised in the media.

She was also wrongly considered a person from the Jahangir Tareen camp and since JKT was gone her support also diminished which gave her opponents an opportunity to get rid of her.

No matter what is the truth, Tania Aidrus’s resignation is a loss to digital Pakistan. One hopes the prime minister corrects course to bring Digital Pakistan back on track.

Fareeha Butt
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2020