December 27, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa’ad 3, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 26: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) has earned a net income of Rs91.9 billion during the last five years, the Senate was told on Friday.

Minister for Telecommunication and Information Technology Awais Leghari in a written reply said out of Rs91.9 billion, PTCL earned an income of Rs23 billion in the year 2002-03, Rs19.8 billion in 2001-02, Rs18 billion in 2000-01, Rs13.3 billion in 1999-2000 and Rs17.5 billion in 1998-99.

The minister said the privatization of the company was also being processed to attract new management, capital and technology to improve the efficiency and quality of the service of this utility.

The privatization would also create and induce corporate governance culture in a deregulated environment to help improve the performance of the company for the benefit of the sector and all the stakeholders especially the consumers. It would also help in generating higher tax revenues as well as increased profits for the shareholders through enhanced profitability in the private sector.

The privatization would also help in the retirement of national debt and implementation of poverty alleviation programmes.

To another question, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed rejected the impression of any nudity or vulgarity in the PTV programmes and explained that PTV programmes were made in accordance with the censor policy, approved by the government.

He said, 1,106 Cable TV licences had been granted so far to cable operators throughout the country. However, as per assessment of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), there were still a number of cable operators who had not been detected so far and were operating without obtaining a valid license.

The task of detecting illegal cable operators initially in the four major cities including, Lahore, Karachi, Multan and Rawalpindi has been out sourced and the scope of detection being widened.

He said the number of cable viewers in the country, as per estimate by private companies, was 25 million, which was also increasing with the development of the cable industry.

He said the performance of the cable operators was monitored and evaluated on regular basis through various means. These included detailed head-end inspections, surprise inspections and public feedback.

About the government advertisements, he said these were released to those newspapers and periodicals which were borne on the Central Media List, maintained by the Press Information Department (PID) in accordance with the specific requirements of the sponsoring departments/organizations.