THIS refers to news regarding the arrest of travel agents who were involved in registering mobile phones by stealing travel data of international passengers.

If Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is serious in helping travellers whose data is stolen by travel agents or by airport authorities, and make sure the telephone sellers pay proper duties, there should be biometric verification of the passport holder within two weeks of registration through the PTA DRIBS system.

This bio-metric verification can be done through any mobile phone franchise as it was done for the verification process of SIM cards.

Ayub Malik
Sargodha

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2019