Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Major General Shahzada Alam Malik (Retd) has said that a technical system will soon be in place to curb mobile phone snatching with the help of all cellular mobile operators, City Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), federal and provincial police departments and other government functionaries.
He was chairing a meeting on Mobile Phone Blocking Equipment here on Wednesday at PTA Headquarters, said a statement. The PTA Chairman said that the mobile operators have already been directed to install Equipment Identity Register (EIR) system, which enables a stolen or snatched cell phone to be blocked through its International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) which is a unique number of every cell phone in the world. Once this system starts functioning, the magnitude of this menace will be decreased significantly, he added.
"The PTA has developed a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which will be handed over to mobile phone operators to streamline the reporting of stolen or snatched cell phones.
The PTA will launch a comprehensive awareness campaign to educate the telecom users about the reporting of snatched or stolen mobile phones. The reporting procedure will be kept simple and PTA may establish a help line for this purpose," Malik added.
The Chairman said that CPLC and police will be the key players in this exercise. PTA will ensure that all mobile companies update their database and that data will be shared by all provinces. He said that PTA is striving to facilitate the present telecom sector boom in every possible manner.
On this occasion, Member (Telecom) Mo IT&T Noor-ud-Din Baqai explained that it was on special directions of the Prime Minister that a policy was formulated to address the mobile handset snatching. The government is formulating different rules, policies and laws including E- crime Bill, which will take into account crimes related to IT& Telecom. He said that mobile theft deterrence system will bring down such cases significantly.
Joint Secretary, Interior Ministry emphasised on PTA for the smooth implementation of this system. CPLC chief gave a detailed presentation on mobile snatching and said that in Karachi alone 120 such cases are being reported daily on average whereas CPLC was able to recover 1100 phones so far. A task force comprising of city police, CPLC and members of Electronic Association has been established to deal with this problem, he said. The CPLC has a toll-free number on which consumers can register their complaints. He emphasised that concerted efforts by the police and the mobile phone operators are needed to curb this menace.
The meeting was attended by Member (Telecom) Ministry of IT&T Noor-ud-Din Baqai, Member (Technical) PTA Dr Muhammad Yaseen, DG (Enforcement) PTA M Zubair Tahir, Joint Secretary Federal Interior Ministry Muhammad Aftab, Additional Home Secretary Punjab Babar Hassan Barwana, Additional Home Secretary Sindh Tanveer Qureshi, IG Police Islamabad Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry, Chief City Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) Sharf-uddin Memon and others.-PR
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