KARACHI: Although the leadership of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has always claimed in believing in freedom of speech, the Sindh government plans to launch effective monitoring of the social media tools, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp, it was learned.
As the social media has become the strongest source of highlighting public and political issues, the Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah seemed optimistic to take measures of imposing some restriction on use of social media and ensure its proper monitoring at the provincial level, the insiders told Pakistan Today.
Most interestingly, the plan was also highlighted in the budget speech of the Sindh CM that clearly tells that the government is in touch with the federal authorities to monitor use of social media under the cover of controlling crimes in the province, sources added.
“There are certain measures which are out of mandate and purview of provincial governments. We have therefore taken up them with federal government for further improvement in overall crime control i.e. setting up an integrated national database comprising CNIC, driving license, vehicle number plate, arms license, SIMs etc”, the CM said in Sindh Assembly earlier in his budget speech.
In his speech, the CM further stated making unified criminal record database at a national level with access available to all the law enforcement agencies, developing a mechanism for effective monitoring of social media including Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and etc.
