President’s Office Spokesperson Heena Waleed has been caught making misleading claims about the number of employees in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) following reports of political job appointments made by the current administration.
On Tuesday, a report revealed that the government has appointed over 7,000 political positions since President Mohamed Muizzu took office. Heena quickly took to social media platform X to accuse the report of spreading false information. She claimed that data from the Privatization and Corporatization Board (PCB) showed a drop of more than 1,000 employees in SOEs during the first quarter of 2024 compared to the last quarter of 2023.
However, when we look at the PCB’s first quarter report, it tells a different story. The report shows that at the end of December 2023, there were 30,739 employees in SOEs. By the end of March 2024, that number had risen to 33,284, indicating an increase of 2,545 employees. This contradicts Heena’s claim that the number of SOE employees has decreased.
Since President Muizzu took office on November 17, 2023, nearly 2,000 political appointments have been made, with around 5,000 of those jobs being in SOEs. The source also mentioned that the President allocated an average of 40 jobs to each candidate from the People’s National Congress (PNC) during the recent parliamentary elections, with many of these jobs ending up in SOEs.
In response to the growing number of political appointments, President Muizzu recently decided to dismiss 228 political employees, citing difficulties in managing government spending.
Despite requests for transparency under the Right to Information Act, the government has yet to provide a complete count of political employees. This lack of clarity raises concerns about the true state of employment in SOEs and the government’s commitment to accountability.
