A parliamentary panel Tuesday raised several questions on the collection and utilisation of over Rs 100 billion Universal Service Fund (USF) and role of Finance Ministry in its utilisation, as some parliamentarians stated that it is allegedly reflected in foreign reserves.
The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication, which met with Capt Muhammad Safdar (Retd) in the chair, witnessed an unusual situation when the chairman expressed doubts about the collection and utilisation of the USF. "When we came into the government, the USF was around Rs 60 billion, which is around Rs 100 billion by now," said Safdar, adding that nobody knows about its whereabouts.
The parliamentarians led by Safdar repeatedly asked the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecomm-unication about the actual amount collected in the fund; however, the ministry officials maintained silence in this regard. However, MNA Syed Ali Raza Abidi said that it was reportedly around $ 2 billion. The committee chairman said the collection in the USF can be converted into dollars and more can be earned on it. Further, it can be parked in an account against which the government can borrow huge loans, as the company lacks the capacity to utilise it, he added.
Shazia Marri said that finance minister reportedly takes decisions about the utilisation of USF. If the government has no role, how finance minister takes decision about the utilisation of USF, she asked.
The committee sought complete details of USF collection and its utilisation in the next meeting. The committee also raised questions over the proposed pilot programme of the USF under which 18,000 smart phones would be given to the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). The officials of the ministry also admitted that it is based on "ideas" and is not a research-based project.
The committee unanimously expressed serious concerns over the issue of blasphemous/objectionable material posted on social media and asked the ministry, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) representatives about the actions taken till date and the progress to mitigate the issues relating to this important subject. The representatives from the M/o IT&T, PTA and FIA briefed the committee about steps taken against blasphemous/objectionable material on social media. They also briefed about the culprits arrested across the country in connection with posting and propagation of blasphemous material. The committee appreciated the efforts being undertaken so far by the M/o IT&T, PTA, FIA and other agencies to tackle the issue.
The PTA had taken several steps even before the matter was taken up by the courts. Facebook had been requested to block the reported contents and the relevant accounts. Facebook on several occasions took out the material. However, due to the nature of social media, new accounts were created with similar contents. These accounts were reported to Facebook and they did take some action but not to the satisfaction of the PTA. Keeping this in mind, the chairman PTA met Facebook senior officials in Barcelona and highlighted this matter in the strongest possible terms and sought their co-operation.
Resultantly, Facebook started co-operating fully by removing and blocking reported contents for Pakistan. There were two Facebook accounts mentioned by Islamabad High Court (IHC) with the name "Behnsa" and "Machar" which were searched by the PTA and additionally eight other pages were identified with the similar names containing blasphemous contents. The same were reported to Facebook and the pages were blocked for Pakistani viewership. Besides, the PTA has also searched, identified and blocked 12,968 websites containing blasphemous contents till April, 2017.
In addition to the above, the PTA has developed an electronic portal to facilitate stakeholders to lodge complaints relating to objectionable web contents. In this regard around more than 3,900 complaints have been received so far, which are being disposed of accordingly. A research cell comprising 25 IT professionals has been developed by the PTA which proactively searches blasphemous contents and takes action as per standard operating procedure (SOP).
Blasphemous material being uploaded on internet is in different forms i.e. literature, pictures, audio, video, etc. Therefore identification of blasphemous material without human intervention is not possible. As already mentioned, the PTA has deployed a team of 25 personnel for the purpose and so far it has blocked around 12,968 such links. Given the fact that a huge amount of contents is being produced every minute and uploaded on the internet, it is almost impossible to restrict and block any one or more of the content categories completely.
Facebook Inc was also asked to help law-enforcement agencies (LEAs) in Pakistan by providing them with the requisite data they asked for. Facebook reiterated its commitment towards removal/blocking of the blasphemous and objectionable contents and assured that it will improve the response time. They informed the participants of the meeting that they will continue to respect the local laws. Regarding the help extended to the LEAs, they mentioned that they received around 1,000 requests in 2016 from Pakistan and about 70 per cent of them have been complied with and that they will continue to support such requests. Visit of Facebook's senior management to Pakistan is due this month.
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