In an interview, Feroze Jamal Shah, the interim information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), claimed that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) paid up to 5,000 social media trolls each Rs25,000 per month from the public coffers to harass their political rivals online.
According to Feroze Jamal, 5,000 social media trolls were hired while the PTI was in power, and they received monthly payments from the government treasury totaling Rs12.5 crore.
“There are 1,200 trolls in the Ministry of Information alone. Search for 3,800 trolls in various departments is underway. These PTI trolls get Rs25,000 per month at home. During the PTI regime, a media cell was also established at the federal level,” he maintained.
“These social media trolls are still active. There are three months left in the completion of their contract. They were recruited on a one-year contract. The pro-PTI bureaucracy obstructs the investigation,” he added.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is a political party in Pakistan. It was founded in 1996 by Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who served as the country’s prime minister from 2018 to 2022.
The PTI is one of the three major Pakistani political parties alongside the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML–N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and it is the largest party in terms of representation in the National Assembly of Pakistan since the 2018 general election.
With over 10 million members in Pakistan and abroad, it claims to be the country’s largest political party by primary membership as well as one of the largest political parties in the world.
