Prime Minister of Pakistan has given the Ministry of IT and Telecom the administrative control of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Frequency Allocation Board (FAB), we have checked.
Sources confirmed ProPakistani that Prime Minister office has already issued the notification and that necessary arrangements are being made to shift the control of regulatory authorities.
With this development, PTA and FAB will no longer report to Cabinet Division, but will instead come under direct control of Ministry of IT and Telecom.
It maybe recalled that PTA was administratively under IT and Telecom division previously as well until it was given to Cabinet Division during Musharraf era.
It must be mentioned that with administrative control, now Ministry of IT will be directly responsible for appointment of PTA Chairman and members. Moreover all sorts of budgets, appraisals, various kinds of summaries, audit reporting and other official matters that require external approvals will also be catered by MoIT.
In addition to PTA and FAB, following regulatory bodies were also moved from Cabinet Division to respective divisions:
- National Electric Power Regulatory Authority: Water and Power Division
- Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority: Petroleum and Natural Resources Division
- Public Procurement Regulatory Authority: Finance Division
As per international practices, regulatory bodies should be independent.
Pakistan Government instead of progressing and improving their system is going back and bringing every department under their control. Like many other violations done by the Government, this step appears to be violation of the “International Deregulation Policy” . World Bank had provided handsome grant to Pakistan for enforcing the Telecom Dergulation Policy. These practices bring bad name to the country and put question mark on the Pakistanies all over the world.
Telecom Industry should raise thier voices against this change .
Both members of PTA are willing to join PTA as Director General after finishing their tenures as members. Post of Director General (Finance) is vacant for last three years and member (finance) is not hiring DG (Finance) at cost of loss to PTA. Similarly, a lot of inefficiency has been introduced in PTA as several seats of DGs and Director are vacant and operators and other companies affiliated with PTA for their business are badly affected because of this inefficiency. In this situation, it may be a good news for operators as they would be able to approach MoIT as PTA in many cases is useless for them.
fair bolo sheerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr