Pakistan misrepresented at IMO event in London?

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) might again not be comfortable with a four-member Pakistani delegation which, even Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Kamran Michael thought, comprised of irrelevant delegates.
Foreign tours are something for which the country’s ruling elite has long been under fire. Though not noticed by the media critics, this trend has also sneaked into the bureaucracy where the government officials accompany the ministers in the latter’s foreign trips, most of the time for personal amusement and exposure.
All these opportunists, mostly cronies or close relatives of the visiting ministers, put to compromise on the national interest.
Michael is presently in London to represent Pakistan, a country with a fast growing ports and shipping industry, at the IMO’s 28th Assembly which was opened by the Organisation’s Secretary General Koji Sekimizu last Monday on November 26. “This panel is not the one I had nominated (in the summary),” the PML-N minister was heard complaining minutes before leaving for the British federal capital this week.
At the nine-day event the federal ports and shipping minister is accompanied by Chairman PNSC Siddique Memon, KPT’s General Manager Planning and Development Ghulam Ali Memon and Noman Bashir, the designation of whom is unclear to even the close aides of the federal minister.
Sources in the ministry recalled that the IMO had objected that “irrelevant” delegates had attended its last year’s event from Pakistan. They claimed that the objectionable persons in Pakistan delegation were Muhammad Adnan and Haris Usman, the letter being a close relative of then Federal Ports and Shipping Minister Babar Ghauri.
“The two were from KPT’s IT and finance departments. Haris was the minister’s nephew,” claimed the sources.

This year too, the sources said, not all the four members of Pakistani delegation were representing well their country at the IMO event as Bashir was somehow able to put his name on the visitors’ list to London. “Despite being an irrelevant person to the purpose of an event he always tries to get himself aboard and succeeds,” said an insider at the ministry of ports and shipping.
Asked how come an unwelcome official could join the foreign delegation while the tourists are nominated by the minister himself, the source said the summary prepared by the minister is usually changed by “opportunists” like Bashir who put their names in before the summary reached back the minister’s table. “This happens somewhere when the summary circulates between the Prime Minister House and the ministries of foreign affairs and ports,” he explained.
Also, Bashir is said to have recently been (for 20 days) in Germany and UK as a part of Pakistani delegation to attend some ports and shipping related events held in the two European countries.
“He can’t even speak a single sentence of English correctly. How one can expect him to represent Pakistan,” the source alleged.
Another source even questioned the company of KPT’s Ghulam Ali Memon who was from the planning and development department.
“This event was meant for officials on the operation side for which the GM operations of the KPT was an appropriate person,” viewed the source.
This ill-planned delegation, the sources said, at least caused the federal minister deliver a “pathetic” speech at the event.
“Prepared by his co-delegates the speech was pathetic having no mention of Gwadar, Port Qasim and other strengths of the country’s ports and shipping industry,” claimed he.
Michael, sources said, wanted to include in his team a member of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Ports and Shipping, an MNA and the secretary ports and shipping, but could not. “His nominations were put aside by the vested interest,” they claimed.
Bashir, the sources said, was in fact a PQA official who had got attached to the ministry of ports without being deputed to the same.
When approached Mohammad Ali, a spokesman of the ministry, all he could tell was the names of the delegates. The spokesman ducked all other questions saying he had no idea about any such impressions.
Ali said the delegation was due to arrive back on the December 5 as the international moot was ending on December 4.
The IMO event is being attended by more than 1,000 delegates from the member states as well as from international governmental and non-governmental organisations.
The IMO is a specialised agency of the United Nations which is meant to take measures to improve the safety and security of international shipping and to prevent marine pollution from ships.