ISLAMABAD, July 19: The federal government has approved the expansion plan of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) to install two million new fixed telephone sets at a cost of Rs20 billion.
Official sources told Dawn here on Monday that the PTCL Board was meeting this month to work out various formalities in order to undertake the expansion plan across Pakistan during 2004.
The expansion plan was approved by the government despite the fact that the company was to be privatized. Three international companies, one each from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon, have expressed their willingness to buy the PTCL.
The government will not provide any funding for the expansion which will have to be carried out by the PTCL through its own resources. Since the company continued to make profit, it was said to be in a position to finance new plans.
However, the government expected from the present management of the company to introduce efficiency, especially by managing manpower and overstaffing issues. The PTCL was also directed to introduce full automation to remove public complaints.
"We need to make our processes corruption free for which human involvement will be gradually reduced in order to have complete automation," a source said. Previously there were only 2.4 million fixed working connections which increased to 4.2 million by February 2004, hence the tele density increased from 1.85 per cent in 1996 to 2.8 per cent by the end of February this year - an improvement of 51.35 per cent.
Installation charges, sources said, had been reduced from Rs1,850 to Rs1,350 for urban areas and from Rs1,850 to Rs500 for rural areas, there was a scope for further reduction in installation charges keeping in view the growing competition.
The government, sources said, wanted early privatization and de-regulation of the PTCL so as to encourage more competition by having new companies in the country. However, the process was slow due to which the international telecom players were hesitant in coming forward and taking part in the privatization of the PTCL.
"This is really unfortunate that right now only three foreign companies are interested in PTCL due to which its privatization is still being delayed under one pretext or the other," another source said.
Customer services, he said, needed to be improved about which a lot of complaints were received daily. Now a decision has been taken to separate the customer and technical departments in order to improve customer services. "Without making the company customer-oriented, it would be difficult to fetch a good price for the company through its privatization," the source said.
