ISLAMABAD, Dec 19: The government is bringing a legislation to put those elements to task that are involved in spam and denial of service to Pakistan’s internet backbone and making the official websites inaccessible, Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari said on Friday.

Replying to a supplementary question of Ms Tanveer Khalid during the question-hour session, the minister told the Senate that presently no law was available in the country to penalize elements responsible for rendering “our internet system inaccessible through spam attacks”.

He said Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali had also stressed the need for an international as well as national law to check such elements during his speech at the World Summit on Information Technology.

The house was told that 1.9 million users were benefiting from internet services in the country, the highest being in Sindh where there were 1.3 million users, the Punjab, 380,904 users; the NWFP, 50,050 users; Balochistan, 11,010 users and Islamabad/Rawalpindi, 170,000 users.

The minister of state for law and parliamentary affairs also said the IT ministry had taken measures to improve internet bandwidth speed and the quality of service being offered by different Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The house was informed that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had taken appropriate actions to ensure reliable and affordable service to the consumers.

License Enforcement Wing of the PTA with its headquarters in Islamabad and regional offices in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta is responsible for ensuring quality of service and for protecting consumers’ interests.