Muhammad Naveed appointed as the new Chairman PTA

PTA has announced a new acting Chairman, Muhammad Naveed, after not being able to find a suitable replacement for Ismail Shah, the former Chairman. The new acting Chairman is recently appointed as the Member of Finance at PTA.

Just to recall, PTA executive body consists of three members. They are categorized as into Member Finance, Member Compliance and Member Technical. According to the rules, Member Technical is expected to be the Chairman PTA. As Federal Cabinet has still not found any suitable candidate for this post, so Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi chaired a meeting of the Federal Cabinet recently and approved the appointment of Muhammad Naveed as Chairman PTA for 3 months.

Getting into the professional background of Muhammad Naveed, it must be noted that he is a chartered accountant by profession with an experience of over 18 years in the telecom industry. For almost 10 years, he has retained the position of chief financial officer (CFO) at Alcatel-Lucent, a French global telecommunications equipment giant. He had also been working as CFO at Alcatel-Lucent for Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, quite recently.

Previously, Lahore High Court ordered Govt to find new Chairman PTA in 30 days but Federal Cabinet has not been able to do this even after three months of that order. The tenure of former Chairman PTA and Member (Technical) Ismail Shah ended on November 13. Now almost 5 months have passed and govt couldn’t appoint Chairman PTA.

However, the position is re-advertised again and new Member Technical is likely to be appointed after due process.