Now the UAE-based Telecommunication Company, Etisalat, has taken over the charge of PTCL after its privatisation, the standard and quality of telecommunication is still far from satisfactory for an ordinary telephone subscriber in Karachi.
When people make calls from one landline number to another, or from one landline telephone number to any cellular network viz. Instaphone, Paktel, Mobilink, Warid, Telenor or Ufone, the telephone subscribers have to make repeated attempts to make telephone calls, as they did not get through in the very first attempt.
The simple reason is that all PTCL lines remain choked throughout the day and in the night due to more telephone numbers given to the subscribers and inadequate telephone circuits provided by PTCL for the cellular phone network users.
Whenever any cellular phone number is dialled from a PTCL landline, a repeated recordings in English and Urdu are heard, saying: "All lines are busy at the moment, please try later - Thank you".
Can PTCL chief tell the subscribers how many times, one has to make repeated attempts just to make a simple telephone call? Is there any limit or not?
The present set-up of PTCL in Karachi is that we have a Director General (Sindh and Balochistan), who sits in the Clifton area, and then we have General Managers looking after the affairs of each region, and in addition to that, we have an army of directors, divisional engineers, assistant engineers and sub-divisional officers and so on.
Can I ask all of them what is their performance?
The government of Pakistan should take a strict note against all PTCL personnel who are directly responsible for improving and upgrading the telephone service in Karachi and have not been able to perform their duties diligently.
The minimum level of punishment for such people is that their annual increments should be stopped forthwith, until such time that an ordinary telephone subscriber gets relief from the agony which he or she is suffering by dialling one telephone number repeatedly, but all of the exercise becomes futile, when a subscriber listens to the repeated PTCL recording message.
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