PM Khan appoints special assistant on accountability

The freshly seated Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) government has appointed Mirza Shahzad Akbar as special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on accountability on Monday.

"In terms of rule 4(6) of the Rules of Business, 1973 read with serial number 1A of Schedule-VA of the said rules, the prime minister has been pleased to appoint, with immediate effect, Mirza Shahzad Akbar as special assistant to the prime minister on accountability, with the status of Minister of State," read a notification issued.

Shahazad Akbar is a human rights lawyer, and so-founder and legal director of Foundation for Fundamental Rights.

On Sunday, Imran Khan in his first ever address as the Prime Minister of Pakistan informed the nation about the dire economic situation of the country.

“Never in Pakistan’s history we faced such difficult economic circumstances…Our debt burden is Rs28 trillion. We haven’t been as indebted in our entire history as we have been in the last 10 years”, he said while referring to the economic challenges and the ways to deal with them.

He said the interest that country had to pay on foreign debt reached a level that “we have to borrow more just to repay the interest rate on the foreign loans we had taken before”.

“Our external debt obligations have reached a level that we’ve to contemplate how we’re going to grapple with them. On one hand, we are so indebted while on the other, our human development index ranking is in the doldrums,” he lamented.