ISLAMABAD: Legislators in Pakistan’s key Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provinces were sworn in as members of the cabinet on Wednesday, almost a month after the contentious polls of Feb. 8.
In Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and politically important Punjab province, an 18-member cabinet was sworn in, whose members will serve under the country’s first woman chief minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif.
The legislators were sworn in at a ceremony held at the Governor’s House in Lahore. Punjab Governor Muhammad Balighur Rehman administered the oath of office to 18 legislators with Sharif by his side.
“That, as a minister of the government of Punjab, I will discharge my duties, and perform my functions, honestly, to the best of my ability, faithfully in accordance with the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the law,” the ministers read out their oath after the governor.
“And always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, well-being and prosperity of Pakistan.”
Legislators who took oath were Marriyum Aurangzeb, Azma Bokhari, Shafay Hussain, Salman Rafique, Khawaja Imran Nazir, Syed Muhammad Ashiq Hussain Shah, Muhammad Kazim Pirzada, Rana Sikandar Hayat, Zeeshan Rafique, Bilal Akbar Khan, Sohaib Ahmed Malik, Bilal Yasin, Ramesh Singh Arora, Khalil Tahir Sandhu, Faisal Ayub, Sardar Sher Ali Gorchani, Sohail Shoukat Butt and Mujtaba Shuja ur Rehman.
Aurangzeb has been handed the portfolio of planning and development as a senior minister while Bokhari will head the ministry of information. Hussain has been given charge of the provincial ministry of commerce and industry.
Salman has been given charge of the specialized health care department while Nazir will lead the primary and secondary health ministry in Punjab. Sandhu has been handed charge of Punjab’s human rights ministry while Arora has been appointed as the minister for minorities by the chief minister.
Separately, a 15-member cabinet was sworn in at the Governor’s House in Peshawar. With newly elected Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur by his side, Governor Hajji Ghulam Ali administered the oath of office to the legislators.
Before the ceremony began, legislators shouted slogans in favor of former prime minister Imran Khan, the jailed head of the majority party in the province, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). A large, framed picture of the jailed cricketer-turned-politician was placed in the middle of the table by the legislators.
Members of the KP cabinet who were sworn in included Arshad Ayub Khan, Shakeel Ahmad, Fazal Hakim Khan, Muhammad Adnan Qadri, Aqib Ullah Khan, Muhammad Sajjad, Meena Khan, Fazal Shakoor, Nazir Ahmad Abbasi, Pakhtoon Yar Khan, Aftab Alam Khan Afridi, Khaleeq Ur Rehman, Syed Qasim Ali Shah, Faisal Khan Tarakai and Muhammad Zahir Shah.
The ceremonies take place amid a tense political atmosphere in Pakistan, with the PTI refusing to acknowledge the mandate of its rival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party.
The PTI says it won a two-thirds majority in the Feb. 8 polls, which were marred by allegations of vote rigging and a countrywide shutdown of mobile and Internet services. Pakistan’s election regulator has rejected the PTI’s allegations it manipulated results, calling on all aggrieved parties to seek redressal from relevant forums.
As economically troubled Pakistan seeks a new long-term bailout program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) amid overlapping security, economic and political crises, Khan’s party has vowed to continue protests against the “rigged” elections.
Cabinets take oath in Pakistan’s key Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces
https://arab.news/2j2w8
Cabinets take oath in Pakistan’s key Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces
- Eighteen-member cabinet sworn in Pakistan’s most populous eastern Punjab province
- Fifteen-member cabinet takes oath in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province
Italian officials go on trial over shipwreck that killed Pakistanis among 94 migrants
- Thirty-five children were among those killed when the boat crashed on the rocks off the coast of the tourist town of Cutro in 2023
- They are accused of involuntary manslaughter and “culpable shipwreck,” a crime in the Italian penal code punishing negligent actions
ROME: Six members of Italy’s police and coast guard go on trial Friday over a 2023 shipwreck that killed at least 94 migrants, accused of failing to intervene on time.
The disaster off the southern Calabrian coast was Italy’s worst in a decade and set off a firestorm of criticism against far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s tough stance on the thousands of migrants who arrive by boat each year from North Africa.
Thirty-five children were among those killed when the boat crashed on the rocks off the coast of the tourist town of Cutro on February 26, 2023.
Four officers from Italy’s Guardia di Finanza (GDF) financial crimes police and two members of the coast guard are standing trial in nearby Crotone.
They are accused of involuntary manslaughter and “culpable shipwreck,” a crime in the Italian penal code punishing negligent actions or omissions leading to a shipwreck.
The overcrowded boat had set sail from Turkiye carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. Around 80 survived.
Dozens of bodies washed up along the beach, their coffins later filling much of a nearby sports hall — brown wood for the adults, white for the children.
Authorities say more people may have perished in the shipwreck, their bodies never found.
’Negligent’
The charges against the officers relate to a search-and-rescue operation that never came, despite the boat having been tracked for hours.
A plane from European Union border agency Frontex had spotted the vessel in difficulty some 38 kilometers off the coast and flagged it to Italian authorities.
But a boat subsequently sent by the GDF police turned back due to the bad weather, and the migrant boat eventually capsized on rocks near the beach.
Prosecutors accuse the police of having failed to communicate key information to the coast guard, while the coast guard members allegedly failed to collect details from police that would have alerted them to the situation’s urgency.
Liborio Cataliotti, a lawyer for defendant Alberto Lippolis from the GDF — who ran the air and naval command center from Calabria’s other coast — told AFP his client was “very calm” heading into trial.
He said his client is being held responsible for subordinates not having provided more information.
All those on trial worked from various control centers far from the site of the shipwreck.
More migrants feared dead
Charity groups that operate search-and-rescue boats in the Mediterranean, including SOS Humanity and Mediterranea Saving Humans, are civil parties to the case.
They say the tragedy points to the policy of Meloni’s hard-right government of treating migrant boats as a law enforcement issue rather than a humanitarian one.
Human Rights Watch’s acting deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, Judith Sunderland, said it was not only the individual officers on trial, but also “Italian state policies that prioritize deterring and criminalizing asylum seekers and migrants over saving lives.”
Visiting Cutro after the tragedy, Meloni put the onus for the disaster squarely on the shoulders of human traffickers, announcing toughened penalties for those who cause migrant deaths.
Two men accused of trafficking the migrants on the boat, one Turkish and the other Syrian, were sentenced to two decades in prison in 2024.
In December that year, two Pakistanis and a Turk were convicted by a court in Crotone for their lesser roles in managing the migrants on board, with sentences from 14 to 16 years.
Around 66,000 migrants landed on Italy’s shores last year, a similar number to 2024, down from more than 157,000 in 2023, according to Italian government officials.
But many lost their lives trying to make the journey.
At least 1,340 people died while crossing the central Mediterranean last year, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
On Monday, the agency said it feared for the lives of over 50 people missing after a shipwreck off the coast of Libya during the recent Storm Harry.
Days earlier, one-year-old twin girls were reported missing after their boat hit bad weather crossing from Tunisia to Italy.
