ISLAMABAD, Nov 7: Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication Anusha Rehman on Thursday directed the agencies concerned to control grey trafficking in the country.

The practice of making long distance calls through illegal means from the country is known as grey trafficking.

“Grey trafficking should be controlled at the earliest and those allegedly involved in this illegal activity must be brought to book,” the minister said while chairing a follow-up meeting on the monitoring of grey trafficking.

The direction was given to Secretary IT Akhlaq A. Tarrar, acting chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and representatives of law enforcement agencies.

The state minister acknowledged that there had been some decrease in grey trafficking after the PTA and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) enforced the law. Nonetheless, she stressed taking measures for its further control. The directions came after the authorities concerned took action against two operators involved in grey trafficking in Rawalpindi within the span of about two weeks.

The ministry of information technology had issued a policy directive last year to establish the international clearing house exchange for international incoming calls for long distance international, fixed-line local loop, wireless local loop and mobile operators. Later, a committee was constituted by the FIA to operate in coordination with the PTA to curb grey traffic.

In May this year, a separate committee was formed to investigate and detect illegal set-ups, plan raids and take follow-up of the cases. The recent two raids and seizures of illegal exchanges were conducted jointly by the teams of the FIA and the PTA.

According to a rough estimate, about 500 million minutes of illegal calls are made every month from Pakistan to other countries, said the minister.