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Corporate sector urged to invest in showbiz, sports to promote country’s image, identity

By our correspondents
January 19, 2018

Islamabad: Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb has urged the corporate sector to invest in emerging film industry, music, and sports sectors of the country in order to do image building of Pakistan and also to promote its national identity at the international level.

“The corporate sector of the country while sensing its social obligations should now focus on film industry, music, and sports for sake of image building of our country and to enhance its national identity in line with efforts of the government after waging the war against terrorism constantly for several years,” said the state Information minister.

Marriyum was speaking as the chief guest at the 10th International Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Awards-2018 organised by National Forum for Environment and Health here at a hotel on Thursday evening.

The minister said the present government had the full realisation that during all the years it had waged the war against terrorism, the profitability and business done by corporate sector of the country had phenomenally decreased and so was the state of social responsibilities performed by them.

“Now the corporate sector of the country has been revived with war against terrorism drawing to a close, it is time that the corporate organisations along with other areas should also focus on these sectors to promote positive image and national identity of Pakistan for rest of the world,” she said.

She said that areas like film industry, music, and sports should be focused by the corporate sector like other social sectors where private companies did investment under their CSR-related obligations to do welfare and uplift work for less-privileged and impoverished communities of the country.

She praised the philanthropic work being done by the country’s corporate sector in all the important socio-economic sectors where the private sector did share responsibilities of the government for provision of fundamental facilities of life.

She said that corporate and private sectors had also been performing very well to impart training to youth of the country related to different technical skills so to help them earn decent livelihood and also enable them to fulfil their responsibilities for securing economic prosperity in the country.

She said that skill development was one area where the government and private sector worked shoulder-to-shoulder with each other to achieve a common goal that was very important for the cause of national building.

Aurangzeb said that she fully realized massive and good philanthropic and social work being done by the corporate sectors as she had done similar CSR-related work including fundraising for good causes earlier for 11 years during her association with Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Earlier speaking as the guest of honour of the event, State Minister for Petroleum Jam Kamal said that corporate sector doing social and philanthropic work should share with the govt data collected by them during implementation of their CSR-related projects.

Kamal said that data of socio-economic sectors so shared with the govt would enable the State to fully discharge its obligations related to provision of basic facilities and necessities of life to people of backward and rural areas.

He said that corporate and private sector while doing their CSR-related projects should also do public campaigning while using the social media to urge the govt and the state to fulfil its basic obligations for less-privileged communities of the country.

“The state should not at all become passive towards fulfilling its social obligations while seeing that the corporate sector has been doing well in these areas as we should keep in mind that the corporate sector does have its limitations while doing such social work,” said the State Petroleum minister.On the occasion, both the state ministers distributed awards among 52 companies and organisations for doing excellent work in the field of CSR.