Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has vowed to promote ‘consultation’ and ‘teamwork’ in the province to shed his public image of running a one-man-show in the province, Pakistan Today has learnt.
During the very first cabinet meeting held on Wednesday at the Civil Secretariat, the CM expressed these views saying that the entire team will be consulted and taken on board on crucial decisions to change his image of running the province single-handedly and with an iron hand.
The chief minister said the performance of provincial ministers will be reviewed on a monthly basis and only those ministers will remain in the cabinet who will serve the people sincerely.
Even in the past term, Shahbaz is always criticized for taking important and costly decisions on his own and then putting the entire provincial bureaucracy on completing the desired projects. The BRTS, for example, started on the desire of the CM alone and no consultation was undertaken, an official privy to development told Pakistan Today.
Sources further revealed that the newly sworn-in cabinet did not discuss anything else of ‘importance’ and only congratulated each other on being in the cabinet.
Having no agenda, the very first meeting turned out to be a mutual appreciation session in which no guidelines were even discussed. The cabinet members also vowed to serve the public after getting a historic mandate.
The CM reiterated the slogans of “good governance” and “the rule of law”. He also stressed the importance of “honesty and simplicity”.
Shahbaz said that due to “exemplary” performance during the last five years, people have given full mandate to PML-N. He said that if they decided to fully implement the agenda of progress and prosperity of the masses, nothing could stop them from changing the destiny of the province. He vowed that neither corruption was tolerated earlier nor will be tolerated in future.
He was addressing the first meeting of Punjab cabinet at Committee Room of Civil Secretariat on Wednesday. Provincial ministers, special assistants, advisor, chief secretary, Planning & Development Department chairman, acting inspector general police and secretaries of various departments attended the meeting.
The chief minister added that if any untoward incident happened in any part of the country, it affected the entire country. He said that there were threats to the political leadership of PML-N during election campaign but despite these threats and dangers, they participated in public meetings.
The cabinet on its part reposed its confidence in their “brave” leader and said the “soldiers” will also follow in his foot-steps.
Shahbaz not to do it himself anymore
