ISLAMABAD ( ABRAR MUSTAFA )
The series of miseries is not yet over for the Ms. Anusha Rahman Ahmad Khan who is Minister of State for the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT).In a recent development here in Islamabad today, the Senate Standing Committee on IT/Telecom has put the auction of much-awaited 3G/4G on hold as the state minister and the secretary could not satisfy the committee in response to its queries regarding auction process.
Let us inform our readers that the auction of 3G/4G was scheduled on April 23 and the government was expecting to generate almost Rs 1.3trillion through it. This was a very vital opportunity through which the government could handle many crises in one go but inefficiency of the Team Ministry became the major hurdle.
Telecoalert.com has also learnt from its reliable source that the Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has shown dissatisfaction over the performance of the ministry and has urged to overcome the hurdles at the earliest.
The Senate Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications on Thursday formed a sub-committee to prepare recommendations about “legal justification of constituting 3G/4G auction committee that supersedes powers/authority of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in violation of laws.
Chairing meeting of the Body, Senator Idrees Safi, after hearing arguments from members and the government side on constitution and composition of the Committee for 3G/4G auction, issued ruling and recommended that until the Authority – PTA completes its formation and sub-committee presents its recommendations to the main committee, the process of auction be
stopped which has been fixed for April 23.
The members of the sub-committee are Senators Zahid Khan, Abdul Haseeb Khan, Rafiq Rajwana and Faisal Raza Abidi.
State Minister of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Anusha Rehman informed the Body that process of holding the auction through an information memorandum had been completed and that the government was ready to hold the auction on April 23.
She said learning from past experiences, the government has also laid down a stringent payment schedule before the mobile operators for the 3G and 4G spectrum auctions.
Anusha Rehman said the government started the process to auction 3/4G licenses after appointment of Chairman and Members of PTA and added Pakistani consumers have been waiting for the new technology to get better data connections over mobile phones for
years while monetary benefits of around 1.2 billion Dollar to national exchequer also exist.
In their versions on various key matters related to 3G and 4G auctions, Secretary IT and Telecom, Akhlaq Ahmad Tarar and Chairman PTA, Dr. Ismail Shah assured that the auction of 3G (third generation) technology licenses would be conducted in a transparent
manner.
Earlier, the members - Senators Faisal Raza Abidi, Rafiq Rajuana, Rehman Malik and Zahid Ali Khan said the committee realizes that the new technology has great benefits to the consumers but at the same time it also wants transparency and legality in the auction process. They said the Forum wanted to know reasons behind failure of appointing the Member, Enforcement, PTA and mentioned high court's verdict.
The other members of the committee present included Osman Saifullah, Farhat Abbas, Saeedul Hassan Mandokhail, Shirala Malik, Mohsin Leghari and Hafiz Hamdullah.