LAHORE: Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja announced on Saturday that the government is finalizing a plan to guarantee uninterrupted internet access for Pakistan’s IT sector, as part of a broader push to hit the country’s fifteen-billion-dollar export target. Speaking at a joint session of the American Business Forum and LUMS titled “Taking Pakistan’s IT Industry to the Next Level, ” the minister said IT companies would have their internet connections whitelisted to shield them from outages during periods of disruption. “We have a very concrete plan which will be announced that there’s going to be a zero outage of internet, at least, for the industry, ” she told the gathering at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Khawaja said the government was simultaneously expanding fibre-optic networks, mobile broadband coverage, spectrum allocation, and satellite regulation to support the sector. She acknowledged, however, that a shortage of skilled workers remained the biggest obstacle to growth. READ ALSO: ‘Super App’ to be launched for public service delivery: Shaza Citing a recent national test taken by roughly thirty-three thousand computer science students in their final year, she said fewer than one percent scored above eighty percent, and only about four percent crossed the sixty-eight-percent mark across ten measures of job readiness. “The jobs are there. The opportunity is there. But the right people with the right skills are not there, ” she said, calling for an overhaul of curricula from primary school through university. Industry figures echoed the call for reform. Umair Khan, chairman of Folio3 and founding partner of Mentors Fund, said Pakistani firms needed to shift away from freelance-based work and build companies that could compete internationally, which he said would require better schooling, consistent tax policy, and stronger cooperation between government and business. Ahmed Azmat, director of operations at Stewart Pakistan, pointed to his company’s fifteen-year presence in the country and its recent USD 1. 3 million investment in a new office at the National NSTEP facility as evidence of continued foreign confidence in Pakistan’s tech sector, even though much of the work produced still serves overseas clients. Dr. Hadia Majid, an economist at LUMS, said freelancing and remote work could open new economic opportunities for women by offering greater flexibility, though she warned the same arrangements might also entrench existing social expectations around women’s employment. Not everyone placed the blame for the skills shortage on universities. Dr. Syed Sohail H. Naqvi of Knowledge Streams and TMC’s EdTech programme argued that the real bottleneck lay in the job market rather than in classrooms, saying the country needed more government procurement and business opportunities to generate demand for skilled graduates. The session, moderated by Dr. Ihsan Ayyub Qazi of LUMS’ Faculty of Computer Science, concluded with broad agreement among participants that dependable connectivity, job-ready graduates, predictable taxation, improved education, and sustained government backing would be necessary for Pakistan to convert its IT and freelancing potential into a durable, export-driven technology industry. Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
IT sector: Govt finalising plan to ensure uninterrupted internet access: Shaza
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