Social media can’t be controlled in Pakistan, PTA tells PAC

Islamabad: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Thursday made it clear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the social media could not be controlled in Pakistan as the social media websites did not avail the licences from the PTA.

The PAC held its meeting Thursday with the chair of its Chairman Syed Khursheed Shah in which the PTA gave the briefing. The PAC also sought the details of pensions of PTCL employees, its properties and forced retirements of the PTCL employees.

The PTA told the PAC that it had contacted the universities and Higher Education Commission (HEC) for creating awareness for the responsible use of social media. The PTA also told the committee that the consumers could themselves closed the fake social accounts. He further said that the fake account of Senate chairman was closed on same day when the complaint received.

While giving the briefing to the PAC, Chairman PTA Ismail Shah told the committee that that there were over 140 million consumers in Pakistan while the mobile broad-band consumers crossed to 40.21 million and the telecom services were available in 72.4 percent area of Pakistan. He said that drivers of mobile broad-band cab service will also be included in the broad-band services and now drivers of other private taxis will also be offered to use this facility. “The success of Uber and Careem taxi service only due to broad-band facility and because of this the business of other taxis was affected so it was decided to include them also to avail this facility,” he told the committee.

He further said that consumers of broad-band were increasing 185 percent annually and 74,000 terabyte data was being used in Pakistan annually. ‘Due to use of mobile broad-band, first branchless bank sim has been established,” he said.

He said that the fibre optic from Rawalpindi to Khunjerab of 820km was being laid and at the moment 5-submarine cables were being used. The PTA chairman told the committee that new system will be introduced to control mobile phone thefts in the country. He said that Information Exchange Centers were being established in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi to ensure the cyber security. He said the mobile service provider companies were asked to use the joint mobile towers.  The chairman PTA told the committee that the tax of Rs160 billion has been collected from telecom sector last financial year. He said the efforts were being made to stop unnecessary advertisement on the mobile phone.

Regarding on the objection of the audit department, the PTA chairman said the closed telecom company Instaphone owes Rs22 billion.