Pakistan is in the process of developing a law on Personal Data Protection and the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication (the IT Ministry) has issued a consultation draft of the proposed law titled “Personal Data Protection Bill, 2020” (the Proposed Law).
The Proposed Law brings about certain obligations on the persons processing the personal data and confers certain rights on the natural persons (individuals).
In order to disseminate essence of the Proposed Law, S. U. Khan Associates Corporate & Legal Consultants (S. U. Khan Associates) in association with the Legal 500 of United Kingdom has organized a webinar on 4th March.
Syed Junaid Imam, Member IT of the IT Ministry was one of the speakers in the webinar who very elaborately discussed the government perspective with reference to making of the Proposed Law.
Other speakers included legal experts from Pakistan and United Kingdom and technical experts from Pakistan and United Kingdom.
Saifullah Khan, Managing Partner and Saeed Hasan Khan, Partner in S. U. Khan Associates apprised the audience about the salient features of the Proposed Law including scope, applicability, obligations of the persons processing the personal data, rights available to the individuals (natural persons), powers & functions of the proposed Personal Data Protection Authority of Pakistan and grievance settlement mechanism under the Proposed Law.
Dr. Rafi us Shan (Senior Director – Government Policy & Research, P@SHA) highlighted his views about governance challenges & capacity building in the public sector with reference to implementation of the Proposed Law, he also emphasized on the need to create awareness among the general public about the Proposed Law.
Adedoyin Aderibigbe, Lead Senior Legal Counsel and Data Protection Champion EMEA, SAP United Kingdom dilated upon the compliance aspects with relation to personal data privacy under the similar law in United Kingdom and European Union.
HadiHosn, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Axon Technologies United Kingdom apprised the audience about using technology and technological solutions to meet the personal data privacy compliance.
The webinar was attended by a large number of audience from public and private sectors within and outside Pakistan, followed by an interactive questions & answers session.”
