The Senate Standing Committee on IT and Telecom on Wednesday formed a sub committee to look into massive irregularities at the Ministry of IT (MoIT) managed Universal Service Fund (USF) and on the failure of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to perform its duty to control grey trafficking and effectively regulate the telecom companies.
The meeting of the committee was held under Senator Idrees Khan Safi. The committee expressed complete dissatisfaction over the performance of the MoIT and PTA. Senators said investigations were required as it appeared mandarins of MoIT and PTA have allowed tel-cos to fleece consumers and make money out of grey telephony.
Ruling party Senator Syed Faisal Raza Abedi said that USF was being managed by an illegally appointed Chief Executive Officer who was involved in Rs4 billion scam and no action was taken against him. He said that he had submitted proofs to the committee and if it could not bring them to the book then there was no need to continue sitting in the meeting. He said if the committee did not take action within a week, he would be forced to approach the President to take action against corrupt practices in MoIT. The ministry has remained without a minister ever since PPP came into power and Prime Minister manages the affairs of the ministry. Senator Zahid Khan of ANP supported Abedi’s claims and said that the board of directors of USF consisted of contractors who share among themselves all projects. He complained that the committee had twice called USF CEO Pervez Iftikhar to appear before the committee but he has defied the orders. Secretary IT Saeed Ahmad Khan argued that he was there to reply to all the queries. However, Zahid Khan said that they have asked for CEO USF in person to appear before the committee. The chairman decided to issue a show cause to CEO USF for not appearing before the committee.
Abedi said that all the claims made for controlling grey traffic were white lies as influential people including those in Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) were involved in the scam. He said some of the illegal exchanges were operating inside FIA offices and nobody had the guts to bust this illegal business. Stressing for taking decisive action against the bureaucracy, he said that their corruption was giving bad name to politicians in the public.
Earlier Chairman PTA Dr. Yasin admitted that some of the telecom companies were involved in illegal termination as the taxes were on the higher side. He said grey traffic was flourishing due to the legal companies involved in illegal practices. PTA according to him could only monitor 30 per cent of the international traffic. He said during the last four years Access Promotion Contribution (APC) has amounted to Rs64 billion. Secretary IT said that out of 9 billion minutes per annum received from abroad 2.5 minutes were unaccounted for every year. It was causing an estimated loss of $133 million per annum. Chairman PTA proposed that the APC should be lowered as it was the most suitable mechanism to deal with the grey tariff.
Abedi urged that since PTA had failed to take any regulatory action against a cellular company on the large number of consumer complaints regarding over billing, some senior representative of the company should be summoned before the committee.
Zahid Khan complained that the company had not compensated consumers for two day outages in April this year. Chairman PTA claimed that the company had already paid the compensation. Abedi said that PTA was facilitating the telcos to fleece the consumers. He said mandarins were threatening poor consumers for sending mails while they had no mechanism to control bulk SMS sent by banned outfits Hizb-ul-Tahrir or Taliban.
Chairman asked MoIT and PTA to reply to all the queries raised by the Senators. Chairman PTA wanted the committee to meet again after Eid-ul-Fitr as he had to perform Umra. Abedi said that holding the committee meeting after eid meant that all their progress would go down the drain. The committee decided to hold next meeting on August 23rd and asked mandarins to come prepared with answers to all the queries.
