THIS is to draw the attention of the ministry concerned toward the vices erupting from the spread of mobile phone communications in the last couple of years.
In the initial stages when cellphones were introduced, there were checks applied to applicants to provide their personal details on the prescribed form of the mobile company.
At that time the price of the SIM was kept high and, as a result, consumers did not mushroom. Decency, quality and courtesy were then maintained by cellphone users.
But as mobile companies increased and competition among them grew, all checks and balances were withdrawn in favour of sales.
SIM cards became available for as low as Rs100. Gradually, these facilities led to misuse by criminals. Hand-to-hand mobile purchase and sales destroyed the identification system of the users.
Bad calls, threats and other forms of misuse are employed by many who cannot be identified. Then they also choose to shut down their cellphones at will while their callers, some of them genuine claimants of a certain commitment between them, are denied access.
Also, they keep more than one cellphone and play the same tricks with another round of sufferers. They do that on purpose when they are in need of hiding or running away from a party or person.
It is time the government regulated cellphone trade. Mobile companies should be asked to pronounce verification and authentication of all SIMs within three months.
For this purpose, the ‘drop box’ facility should be provided by all mobile companies to their users at various public places where a standard format of information published in the newspaper should be copied and completed by the users, along with a photocopy of their NIC.
All those SIMS that will not be presented for verification within three months will stand cancelled at the end of the deadline.
Those SIMs which could be verified successfully must be restored. For all new SIMs the government should direct companies to fix a reasonably high price homogenously for all mobile companies, thus removing competition among them at this point.
The mobile companies should sell the new SIMs only after obtaining personal details of the applicant, supported by a copy of his national identity card.
Mobile companies should be made to develop control software so that if a SIM does not answer an incoming call five times consecutively, the SIM will be cancelled forthwith and made invalid for any further use of it.
Thus a heavy penalty imposed on those who misuse cellphones in this manner will help check the present attitude of free will to receive only selected calls.
The SIM holder should have the facility to report shutting off his SIM for a minimum number of days on the sole grounds of overseas travel for a maximum of 30 days. The caller should then hear a tape: user out of country till so and so date.
The sufferers at the hand of a SIM holder should be provided the contact address of the SIM holder by mobile companies, at the reference of a police paper.
TUBA SAEED
Karachi University
Source: Dawn
Date:4/8/2010
