Pakistan set to launch homegrown messaging service for government employees

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) - Pakistan plans to launch its first ever homegrown messaging application designed for official communication among government employees and officers, a senior official at the Information Technology Ministry told Anadolu on Tuesday.

“Beep Pakistan” will be limited to government employees only in order to maintain "secrecy" and secure data, Baber Majid Bhatti, head of the National Information Technology Board, which has designed the application.

"It (application) has been developed and (is) already functional. It is undergoing trial runs within our ministry," Bhatti said, adding that once the application's testing is fully completed, it will be launched.

"The application has been developed in a way whereby It can be expanded for general use,” he said, adding that it might be considered to be made available to the general public at a later stage depending on the future situation.

Responding to a query about the timeframe for the launch, Bhatti said: "There is no definitive timeframe for that, but it will be launched among the government departments within the next few months. It could be even before."

He said the newly-developed application has no "competition or comparison" with WhatsApp.

"WhatsApp is there for commercial gains, to collect and use your data for commercial purposes. Whereas Beep Pakistan is a government communication project, and is aimed at securing data and maintaining secrecy,” he went on to say.

"In fact, it (application) has been developed to discourage the use of WhatsApp among government employees due to secrecy issues," Bhatti added.

The government’s plan comes at a time when internet users across the country have reported facing frequent disruptions amid a ban on social media platform X.

The government banned the social media platform on Feb. 17, days after widespread protests against alleged rigging in the general elections, drawing widespread public outcry.

The Interior Ministry, in a written response to the Sindh High Court last month, which is hearing multiple petitions against the ban imposed in late May, defended its action, saying that it has no plans to restore the app.