KARACHI, Oct 9: The Pakistan Post Office (PPO) has asked the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) to double the fee for delivery of telephone bills, Dawn learnt here on Tuesday.

At present, the PPO, which distributes as many as 400,000 telephone bills issued by the PTCL every month, gets Rs2.5 for delivery of bills.

Well-placed sources told Dawn that the contract between the PPO and the PTCL under which the postal utility distributed telephone bills had expired on June 30. They added that negotiations were on for a better tariff package for the PPO.

They added that the PPO had demanded Rs5 per bill — twice the amount the postal utility is getting at the moment — for unrecorded bills for which a receipt by the receiver was not required.

For valued bills, which did not require a receipt by the receiver, the PPO had demanded Rs8 per bill.

In technical parlance, those bills are referred to as valued bills which are more than a certain amount fixed by the PTCL every six months.

PTCL officials told Dawn that in view of the poor performance of the PPO in distributing telephone bills, the postal utility was not allowed to distribute valued bills. “To courier services, whose overall performance is far better than that of the PPO, we pay Rs6.5 per valued bill. What makes the PPO think that we will pay more for slipshod services?”

The PPO also authorizes four courier services — Multi-Services, Super Star, Speed Bird, Industrial Techno Services — to distribute unrecorded bills at the rate of Rs1.35. For valued bills, the courier services get Rs6.5 — less than what the PPO is asking for.

Defending the demand for more distribution fee, the Sindh postmaster general, Qamar Jameel, said: “Previously, our minimum charges for distribution of mail was Rs2 which has now been raised to Rs4. We will begin to break even with increased charges.”

A high-ranking PTCL official told Dawn that the PPO was largely responsible for non-delivery of telephone bills. “Courier services distribute telephone bills efficiently, but the PTCL’s performance has been very dismal. As it is, we spend Rs2 million on delivery of bills.”