By: Muhammad Bilal Ghauri

PTI government, contrary to bring structural reforms in ministry of foreign affairs (MOFA),has further
deteriorated it's institutional working by delaying postings. According to information available to this
correspondent , 17 foreign missions are without Ambassadors/High Commissioners/Consul General and
even four more missions are running affairs with "Charge d" affairs. Few critical regions are also being
neglected and three Consulates in Afghanistan are awaiting posting of Consul General.

PTI election manifesto reads "Over the years the delivery of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)
has deteriorated as its institutional structure has failed to keep pace with the demands of the
changing global environment. Four institutional prerequisites will be put in place in order to
enable MOFA to deal with the new external environment and policies more effectively in terms
of successful foreign policy operationalisation" But even after six months , nothing has been
changed.

There are at least 7 foreign missions which are working without envoys. These missions include
Algiers(Algeria), Ashgabat(Turkmenistan), Athens(Greece), Buenos Aries (Argentina), Lisbon (Portugal),
Moscow (Russia) and Rabat (Morocco). Four missions abroad including Singapore , Ottawa (Canada),
Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Brunei (Darussalam) are waiting for the posting of high commissioners. While
There are at least 6 Consulates without Consul General which include
Herat,Jalalabad,Kandahar(Afghanistan), Milan (Italy), Osaka (Japan) and Shanghai (China).

Four missions working with interim set up of "Charge d" affairs are Dar -es -salaam Tanzania , Dushanbe
(Tajikistan ) , Niamey (Niger ) and Pyongyang (North Korea ).

PTI government announced to replace all non career diplomats and several came back too but it looks
like few of these non career diplomats are still blue eyed boys. Matter of the fact is that at least 6 non
career diplomats are still on their posts which include Maj-Gen Tariq Rasheed Khan (retd) in Brunei, Lt-
Gen Saleem Nawaz (retd) in Bosnia and Herzegovina , Major General Junaid Rehmat (retd) in
Jordan , Vice Admiral Waseem Akram (retd) in Maldives and Air Marshal Rashid Kamal (retd) in Syria.

When this correspondent asked about adopting different criteria for non career diplomats, MOFA was
clueless and latter on replied through email that non-career ambassadors posted in US, Canada, Cuba,
Morocco, Serbia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been replaced with career diplomats of Foreign Service of
Pakistan. However, the decision regarding some other non-career ambassadors would be taken in due
course on a case to case basis. About query of delaying postings , MOFA says , The process of posting
Ambassadors/High Commissioners in the vacant missions is already underway