Travellers falling victim to fake registration of mobile phones

Haris Ahmed and his family arrived in Karachi from Riyadh on May 17 to celebrate Eid with his extended family. Among other things in his luggage, he had a new mobile phone to gift his brother.

According to the law, any passenger landing from abroad can bring one extra mobile phone besides their own every year without paying import duty. However, any new phone brought from abroad has to be registered with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), otherwise it gets blocked after a few days.

When Ahmed logged onto the PTA’s Device Identification Registration & Blocking System website (dirbs.pta.gov.pk), to get the new phone registered, he was shocked to find out that a phone that he had never brought into the country was already registered in his name.

When he tried to register the new phone in his wife’s name, she too had another phone already registered. Not only that, his three-year-old and five-year-old daughters had mobile phones registered in their names as well.

When Ahmed discussed the matter with a friend working in the telecommunication sector, he said that some agency might have sold the travel data of his family to a third party, probably importers of mobile phones, so they did not have to pay import duty.

Ahmed got in touch with a female relative who had recently come from Los Angeles so that he could use her name to register the new phone. But she too had a phone, which she had never brought into the country, registered in her name.

Another case

Syed Iqbal arrived in Karachi from Bahrain recently to observe the last days of Ramazan and Eid with his mother. He did not bring any extra mobile phone, but when he input his information on the PTA helpline (8484), he was baffled to find out that another phone had been brought into the country in his name.

When he checked the status of his wife and his three minor children, they too had mobile phones registered in their names. “When all the available options appeared not to be working, I registered an online complaint with the prime minister’s complaint portal and also sent an email to the PTA,” explained Iqbal.

“Later, the authority informed me in a reply to my email that all the mobile phones registered in the names of my family members had been removed. I then registered the mobile phone I had brought in on May 31.”

Condemnation

The All Pakistan Mobile Phone Dealers Association (APMPDA) strongly condemned the law and stressed that the government review it. “We have already held multiple meetings with the relevant authorities, such as the PTA, the FIA, the FBR and the Customs, and each time, we tried to convince them to review the law, as it is badly affecting the ordinary people as well as the importers of mobile phones,” said APMPDA President Rizwan Irfan, who also heads the Karachi Electronic Dealers Association.

“We have asked them to allow used mobile phones from Region 1 and Region 2 instead of Region 3, as used phones of Region 1 and Region 2 are affordable.”

He said that if the government allows the dealers to import used European mobile phones from Region 1 and Region 2, it will help the buyers own good smartphones at cheap prices as well as increase employment and business opportunities in Pakistan.

“We have also tried to convince them that we are ready to pay duties on used mobile phones instead of paying 60 per cent duties of the original cost of the phone from Region 1,” he explained.

“We have also offered them Rs50 billion of revenue a year if they allow us to import used mobile phones from Region 1 and Region 2 because then we will not have to pay money to the middlemen and we will not have to pay bribes to the relevant authorities, as the law is being misused and not adding to the government’s revenue.”

Confirmation

The PTA confirmed that international travellers are falling victim to fake registration of mobile phones. They said the FIA has taken some serious steps by arresting the people involved in the registration of phones on fake identities and changing the devices’ IMEIs.

They also warned shopkeepers, customers and others behind illegal mobile registrations of imprisonment and fines, saying that jail time can be up to seven years and fine up to Rs10 million.

The relevant officials claimed that it has been observed that many phone sellers have started mobile registration through fake or stolen identities of international travellers to bypass the DIRBS.

They said the sellers access the passport information of expatriates from travel agents and use them to register the phones of customers in Pakistan by charging anywhere between Rs2,000 and Rs5,000 per handset.

The PTA has reported this criminal act of mobile phone sellers to the FIA, and the issue has also been highlighted by different segments of society, especially in a senate subcommittee meeting on IT and telecom.

PTA spokesperson Khurram Ali Mehran said the PTA is only a regulator and extending technical support to the FBR for tax collection, adding that identity theft is a crime under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, and the FIA is to take action.