KARACHI, Aug 17: Despite the deregulation of the telecoms sector, the Pakistan Telecommunication Company has done little to better its billing mechanism.
Well-placed sources told Dawn that still the phone utility issued a large number of faulty bills every month. They added that subscribers had to do a lot of running around before his phone bill was rectified.
They added that in some telephone exchanges there was little coordination among different departments. As a result, every month a large number of wrong bills were issued.
The sources cited the case of a subscriber in Landhi, who had received a bill despite the fact that the PTCL had yet to give him a phone connection.
They said that Mr Iftikhar Johan applied for a telephone connection with the Landhi PTCL exchange. He submitted a demand note in a bank on June 25. “The subscriber was issued a bill for June 2003. The bill totalled Rs20. It is interesting that the bill charges the subscriber a line rent of Rs200, but it does not figure in the total given at the end of the bill.”
The sources said that the subscriber had met the officials concerned at the Landhi exchange and informed them about the bill, which had been issued without a telephone connection.
“His surprise knew no bounds, when he was issued another bill for the month of July. This time the line rent was charged and some PTCL dues were also there in the bill, which totalled Rs300, despite the fact that no phone connection was issued by the Landhi telephone exchange,” they said.
In August, the subscriber was allotted a phone number 5032510, but the telephone line had not been activated. They said that the subscriber had again approached the Landhi exchange when the July bill had been issued.
