Thanks to Google!

Today I lost my phone on my to the office in the morning. When I reached my office, I could not find it in my pocket or in the car. I called home, but it was also not there. Then I recalled that I stopped at two places — at an ATM of a bank and at a petrol pump to fill the fuel in the car. When I called on cell number, it was closed down.

My son, who is a software engineer suggested blocking the phone via Google. I did not know how to do it. I went to Google’s website and at the timeline, I found the map route of my phone, which showed it from my home to the petrol pump (here is a screenshot).

I went back to the petrol pump and the guard at the station informed me that he had found the phone when I left the filling station in car. He said he had deposited it in the office and I can take it. I recalled that I had stepped down from the car while checking the filling meter.

I heaved a sigh and collected it from the office with a lot of thanks to the management. My friend Imtiaz Chandio also met with me, said with a pride that it proves the honesty of Chandios (the owner of the petrol station is a Chandio).

After paying gratitude to the Almighty, I also thanked Google for telling me the exact position of the cell phone.

When I inquired I found that my cell phone was at aeroplane mode, that is why the call was not going through on the opened phone. In any case thanks to the Android technology I got back my phone very easily.

Thanks to Google!

Dream of a Digital Pakistan shattered

By Shujauddin Qureshi

---

A tweet by Prime Minister Imran’s Special Assistant for Digital Pakistan Ms. Tania Aidrus on July 29, 2020, sharing her resignation, apparently being heartbroken by severe criticism of her citizenship status has shattered the dream of Digital Pakistan forever.

Pakistan government shared the list of Advisors and Special Assistants to the Prime Minister (SAPMs) who had huge properties and dual nationalities. Ms Aidrus was revealed as a citizen of Canada with a residentship of Singapore.

This resignation news has nothing to do with the so-called ban on the digital game PUBG by the federal government or a proposed ban on YouTube by the courts. Ms. Aidrus had opposed the ban on YouTube. She wrote in a thread of tweets: “Banning a platform like YouTube is not a solution. The 3 years when YouTube was banned in Pakistan it held back our content creator ecosystem which has just started to flourish now, creating employment opportunities for thousands. Our focus should be on ensuring better curation of content through policy and dialogue. Brute force measures like banning will not serve any purpose and will hold us back from achieving the vision of #DigitalPakistan.” Please click on this link

Pakistan has been striving hard to be included in the digital map of the world. Still, many powerful forces inside Pakistan have always hindered any such attempt at a higher level.

With joining of Ms. Aidrus as SAPM had raised hope for quick implementation of the state policies and infrastructures for a Digital Pakistan, but she faced a series of controversies from the start of her joining the DP programme.

First, the former Information Technology (IT) Minister Dr. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui (belonging to the coalition party Muttahida Quomi Movement) resigned apparently for the rights of Karachi, but he was reportedly unhappy with the inclusion of Ms. Aidrus in her ministry.

Moreover, she also faced another controversy when a news item was published in the daily Dawn on June 26, 2020, revealing a controversy on social media, questioning the involvement of Tania Andrus, who is also a member of the board of directors of a company owned by Imran Khan’s aide and now the main accused in sugar scandal.

Only last year on December 5, 2019, Prime Minister Imran Khan launched the Digital Pakistan programme and nominated Ms Aidrus, a Google executive at that time who quit her position, to lead the initiative.

The inclusion of Ms Aidrus on the board of directors of a not-for-profit company the Digital Pakistan Foundation (PDF) had raised concerns, particularly one leading to a conflict of interest because of the lack of transparency around the foundation’s funding and operations.

Although someone else will replace Ms. Aidrus in the DP programme, there is no hope for Pakistan being digitalized in near future.

I am sorry for Sir Zeeshan Usmani, an IT expert and a visionary Pakistani living abroad as he had submitted very fruitful recommendations to Ms. Aidrus in a personal meeting with her at the Prime Minister House in Islamabad, which he had explained in his following YouTube video.

facebook.com/zusmani78/(opens in a new tab)

I am happy that we will soon see a revolution in the IT sector in Pakistan. But all this is devastating.

Had those recommendations been implemented Pakistan would be become digitalized very quickly. But the powerful mafia in the government was not ready to accept such changes and want to keep the country in the dark ages.