KARACHI: Over 1,000 complaints lodged in four days: Cellphone thefts
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, Oct 4: People from across the country have lodged more than 1,000 complaints with the authorities concerned during the past four days requesting for making their stolen mobile phones dysfunctional.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority implemented the mobile phone set jamming system on Sept 30 and directed all the GSM mobile phone operators to disable phone sets, which were reported as snatched or stolen. The Citizen-Police Liaison Committee and the police are cooperating with the PTA and forwarding to it the complaints being lodged with the CLPC and the police.
The CPLC received 1,236 complaints since the jamming device system has been implemented on Sept 30. Among the total complaints, 324 mobile phone sets were snatched, 836 stolen and 76 others were reported as missing.
CPLC chief Sharfuddin Memon claimed that the people whose cellular phones were snatched or stolen before Sept 30 were also registering their complaints.
“We forward all the complaints to the PTA on daily basis and the PTA forwards these numbers to service providers concerned for making respective mobile phone sets disabled. The PTA shares the information about blocked sets with the CPLC and more or less 1,100 cellphone sets have been blocked till Tuesday,” Mr Memon added.
He said that the people, whose mobile phone sets were snatched or stolen from Karachi and other cities in the country, were approaching the CPLC in Karachi and lodging their complaints along with all relevant information.
PTA Regional Director Col Rizwan Hyderi said: “We receive 325 to 350 complaints daily on an average and these numbers are normally blocked in a day time.”
The government and the authorities concerned are making efforts to put a strict check on stealing and snatching of mobile phone sets.
The PTA also directed the mobile phone operators to issue a connection after receiving a copy of ID card of the applicant. The directives were issued following it had been found that some mobile phone operators had issued more than 8,000 connections to one applicant, blatantly violating rules and regulations as one mobile phone operator cannot issue more than 10 connection on a single identity.
Every phone set has 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 contact police Madadgar 15, PTA’s toll free number 0800-25625 or the CPLC helpline number 021-5682222 to lodge complaint. A complaint could also be lodged at the CPLC website (http://www.cplc.org.pk/imei_form.php).
Despite all these directives and checks, some mobile phone operators have started selling their pre-activated connections on roads. New schemes have been introduced by mobile phone operators with attraction of balance for making calls and other benefits. Salesmen of a mobile phone operator stand along a busy road and offer connections with no requirements of any documentation. The buyers of such SIMs (connections) do not know that the connections were issued on whose names.
Law enforcers expressed apprehension that such sale of mobile phone connections was irresponsible and the SIMs could be used in any criminal activity. As the SIMs were not being issued in the name of real buyers, police could face difficulty in tracing a user in case the connection was used in a criminal activity.
