KARACHI: The Sindh police on Wednesday set up a committee of senior officers to coordinate with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and propose measures for effective implementation of biometric verification system (BVS) of cellular connections in the province, said a statement.

The decision came at a meeting of Sindh IG Ghulam Hyder Jamali with senior officials of the PTA who called on him at the central police office (CPO).

The nine-member PTA delegation briefed the Sindh IGP and other senior police officials on the recent measures taken by the telecom regulator to streamline cellular subscribers’ data.

“The Sindh police committee comprising DIG of CIA and DIGs of all three zones will coordinate with the PTA,” said the statement issued by the CPO after the meeting.

“The IGP has further directed the committee to identify the number of unverified SIMs (subscriber identification module) issued so far by the cellular operators and recommend action to resolve this issue,” it said.

The meeting proposed blockage of all the unverified prepaid SIMs, which had not been in use for more than a month and urged the PTA to issue directives to cellular companies to make it binding on their customers to get verified their SIMs through BVS within a stipulated period.

“The PTA officials told the meeting that a joint working group comprising senior representative of the ministry of information technology, Nadra, FIA, IB and other institutions has already been set up by the federal government to look into the issue of unverified SIMs.”

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2014