The Living Scripts | Tariq Zaheer Farooqi (Former Federal Secretary, Ministry of Industries)

The 25th session of IPS’ oral history series ‘The Living Scripts’ was held with Tariq Zaheer Farooqi, former federal secretary, Ministry of Industries, on August 27, 2021.

The former federal secretary, who is now in his 90s, recollected and shared with the audience some interesting memories from his life.

Apprising the audience that he originally hailed from Jalandhar (a city in the north Indian state of Punjab), Farooqi shared that he lost his father at an early age and then had to go through an ailment because of which he was asked to leave the school. He however continued to read a lot of books at home before appearing in exams, and ended up passing the exams with good grades and getting admission in law college.

He was then trained as a professional lawyer and was quite successful at it as well, but decided to change his career path after his family showed dissatisfaction with the profession, and joined civil services in 1956.

Being placed in Pakistan Military Accounts Services, Farooqi then joined CMA Lahore. After holding several important posts, he finally served as Financial Advisor (FA-Army) in the General Headquarters (GHQ), Rawalpindi in early 1970s. Later he as posted as member finance in Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), and was then promoted to the post of Additional Secretary. He then went on to serve as Federal Secretary, Ministry of Industries, and finally retired on the same post in 1993.

During the course of his talk, Farooqi also shared some historic events which he witnessed firsthand including the early days of Pakistan after getting independence. He termed those times a golden period of the country’s history as people were motivated to serve the country with utmost passion and dedication.