ISLAMABAD: Senate standing committee on Information Technology and telecommunication Thursday expressed displeasure over giving targets to franchises of telcos to achieve sale target and directed to form SOP for franchises.
The committee was met under the chairmanship of Senator Shahi Syed while Senator Abdul Rehman Malik, Syed Bhibli Faraz, Taj Muhammad Afridi, Najma Hameed and Muhammad Azam Khan Sawati also attended the meeting.
The committee directed mobile network operators not to pressurise the franchises to achieve the sale targets so that illegal sims could be controlled and to form a new model for selling of the sims.
Information Technology and Telecommunication Minister Anusha Rehman told the committee that, commercial operators are getting engaged with the private sector, government and regulators have no right to interfere in the commercial engagement of private sector, and also have no right to change their business models.
Legally, the government cannot stop telcos if they set up the kiosks and sell sims.
Senator Abdul Rehman Malik and Shibli Faraz suggested the committee to direct telco’s to make Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) for franchises, only those franchises can get leniency those are eligible and rights of franchises should also be protected.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Member Enforcement Abdul Samad told the committee that Federal Board of Revenue with the assistance of Pakistan Revenue Automation (Pvt) and PTA have been developed a software utility portal and all of four telcos have uploaded their monthly customer income tax (withholding tax) data.
He said that surveys are carried out to check charging of call without any human intervention, the charges of calls for different packages are charged using NEMO tools by originating and termination calls for a pre-defined period, against each package advertised by CMOs.
According to PTA no violation is reported and found out regarding free SIMs in the market.
LMKR Vice President told the committee that software is ready but hardware is not available in the CDA office because the systems have been stolen from the CDA office.
He said, “We can also give a demonstration to the committee as well, we have working with many other companies and departments installed software in the companies but CDA itself is not willing to have this software.”
The committee directed to call CDA chairman at the next meeting so that issue could be resolved as soon as possible.
