PESHAWAR, Aug 21: An MNA of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali, has criticised the privatisation of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited and urged the federal government to cancel the deal.

Speaking at a news conference here on Tuesday, Maulana Chitrali called for provision of the PTCL service to the remote villages of the Chitral district.

He termed the PTCL privatisation dubious, and criticised the policy of selling off the profit-earning and technically-sensitive institutions of the country.

The MNA pointed out that he had submitted a question about the issue with the National Assembly secretariat, but they refused to put it on the agenda. “We are representatives of people but we cannot even ask a question about the fishy deal,” he regretted.

Referring to the problem of council Kooh in his constituency, he said this was perhaps the only union council in the country which had not been linked to the networking of the PTCL yet. He said it seemed that Kooh union council was not part of the country as the area had no telephone exchange.

He called upon the government to set up a wireless loop (WLL) and connect Kooh to the national telephonic system. He said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Minister for Information Technology Owais Lehghari both had promised that the WLL would be established in the area, but it had yet not materialised.

Maulana Chitrali said that federal ministers Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, Amir Muqam and Omar Ayub Khan had visited Chitral and assured people that the area would be linked to the national telephonic network, but nothing had happened yet.

He asked the government to install telephone boosters in Torkhow and Mulkhow tehsils and upgrade other facilities in Chitral. He alleged that private mobile phone services were fleecing people without providing them smooth service.

The MNA said the residents of Kooh had staged a protest on Tuesday against the delay in setting up of the WLL facility.

He said they would observe hunger strike against the attitude of the federal government.