Claim: According to posts circulating online, the Government of Pakistan might freeze Roshan Digital Accounts (RDAs) — which are frequently used by Pakistanis abroad to send foreign remittances and investments to Pakistan — as it imposes an economic emergency in Pakistan.
Fact: The government is not planning on freezing RDAs, as has been clarified by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, the State Bank of Pakistan, and Finance Minister Miftah Ismail.
Fact or Fiction?
On 4 June 2022, a Facebook page shared an image of a tweet with the following Urdu caption: اوورسیز پاکستانیوں روشن ڈیجیٹل اکاؤنٹ سے مال نکلوا لو ڈاکہ پڑنے لگا ہے۔
Translated into English the caption reads, “Overseas Pakistanis should withdraw money from Roshan digital accounts as they might get robbed.”
As has been noted above, RDAs are accounts used by Pakistani nationals living abroad to access banking services within Pakistan. They are often used by members of the Pakistani diaspora to send foreign remittances into the country.
Soch Fact Check decided to investigate the claim after it was flagged by users on Facebook.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting refuted the claim via a statement on its official Twitter account. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) also debunked the claims on Twitter saying that, “Foreign Currency Accounts, Roshan Digital Accounts and Lockers in banks are completely safe and there is no proposal to put any restriction on them.”
Finance Minister Miftah Ismail also denied reports that RDAs will be frozen and called the news on social media “wrong and coming from biased quarters.”
The tweet appears to have originally been shared in jest by Twitter user Imran Lalika after the government announced that an economic emergency will be imposed in the country due to the hike in petrol prices. However, a number of pages shared the original post as authentic news.
Virality
To assess the virality of the post in question, Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis, searching the Urdu caption mentioned above for the 7-day period from 2 – 9 June 2022. The caption garnered 320 interactions across 17 posts on Facebook.
The misleading claim has been shared here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Soch Fact Check previously debunked a claim about low inflows in Roshan Digital Accounts after Imran Khan’s ouster.
Conclusion: The government has not announced that they will freeze Roshan Digital Accounts. In fact, they announced that they have no plans to make such a move. The posts claiming otherwise are false and misleading.