The government on Wednesday appointed Abu Abdullah M Saleh (Saleh Shibly) as Press Secretary to the Prime Minister with the status of secretary on a contractual basis.

In a separate order, Atikur Rahman Rumon was appointed Additional Press Secretary on a contractual basis.

The Ministry of Public Administration issued separate notifications in this regard.

Earlier, on January 3, Shibly was appointed Press Secretary to Tarique Rahman, Chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, while Rumon has long been working as a member of the BNP Media Cell.

Shibly has long handled key press and administrative responsibilities under Tarique Rahman and was made chief of a BNP press coordination team formed on November 1 last year.

He began his journalism career as a campus reporter for the Daily Banglabazar while studying Public Administration at the  University of Dhaka, where he later completed his Master’s degree.

Over the years, he worked in different branches of the media, including the news agency United News of Bangladesh (UNB), the Daily Manab Zamin, Radio Today and Channel i

During the tenure of the four-party alliance government, he served as First Secretary (Press) at the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Kolkata.

Several of his articles on women’s empowerment were published in Asian Bridge, a magazine of the Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women.

While abroad, he worked as Executive Editor of London-based Bengali-language television channel Channel S and earned a PhD focusing on media and public administration.

He also served as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Sydney Policy and Analysis Centre.

Shibly returned to Bangladesh on December 25 on the same flight as Tarique Rahman did from the United Kingdom.

He is also the author of the book Tarique Rahmaner Nishiddha Bhashan (The Forbidden Speeches of Tarique Rahman).