UPPER DIR, July 15: People here are facing problems because of the failure of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) to remove faults in the telecommunication system which have persisted for the past year.
When a customers tries to make a trunk call, a recorded message of “all lines are busy at the moment, please try later” is played and he often fails to connect for hours.
Whenever the sky is overcast, the telephone link of Dir with the rest of the country is disrupted.
The small digital exchanges in Barawal, Sheringal, Sawni, Ushari, Darora, Qulandi and other areas frequently remain out of work for months and officials of the Digital Radio System (DRS) don’t show interest in removing the faults despite repeated complaints by the customers.
The problems in telephone and internet links cause problems for commercial customers, banks, government offices, journalists and domestic customers.
The failure of the system also causes loss of thousands of rupees daily to owners of public call offices.
The internet service in the area has also gone out of work for the past one month and the users are disconnected almost after every minute.
The DRS officials at Dir frequently remain absent.
When contacted, Timergara DRS Divisional Engineer Abdul Wakeel said the department’s Dir office had informed him that there was no fault in the system and internet was working smoothly.
Meanwhile, the Chukiatan grid station has complained that its phone has been out of order for the past two months despite repeated complaints. The Upper Dir nazim and district coordination officer are also reported to have written to the PTCL general manager in Peshawar for restoring the line but in vain. An official at a grid station complained about the absence of phone service.
