KARACHI, Sept 30: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on Saturday implemented the cellphone set jamming system following growing incidents of snatching and theft of cellular phone sets across the country.

The step has been taken by the PTA in the wake of alarming rise in cellphone snatching and theft incidents. According to statistics provided by the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee, 39,982 mobile phone sets had either been snatched or stolen in Karachi alone between January and September this year, and some people lost their lives when they had resisted the bandits.

A spokesman for the PTA said that the authority would entertain fresh complaints at the first stage and subsequently a way would be devised to ‘entertain the backlog’.

He said that complaints would be dispatched to service providers concerned and they would report to the PTA after electronically jamming the cellphones within 24-hours.

Regional Director of the PTA Col Rizwan Hyderi, chaired a meeting at his office here with representatives of all GSM cellphone companies to ensure the implementation of the mobile phone set jamming technology, said a PTA press release.

He said that every phone set had a unique IMEI number, which could be obtained by dialling *#06#. In case of snatching or theft of a mobile phone set, the owner should give his IMEI number and his identity card number to his service provider, which would jam it accordingly. Subscribers could contact police Madadgar 15, PTA’s toll free number 0800-25625 or the CPLC helpline number 5682222 to lodge their complaints.

Mr Hyderi directed shopkeepers dealing with cellphones to verify their International Manufacturing Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers from the CPLC before buying them. He claimed that the PTA received 300 complaints from subscribers after the system’s implementation.

However, sources said that the PTA received only 39 complaints on the first day and the CPLC received 208 complaints, of them 40 were about incidents which took place on Saturday.