KARACHI, Oct 7: The number of unattended phone complaints has risen considerably since the privatization of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company earlier this year.

Sources in the PTCL told Dawn on Friday that the costumer service centres had been left unsupervised to such an extent that subscribers seeking to get their faulty telephone lines repaired had to wait for months. “Unless the subscribers have influence with the PTCL, their complaints go completely unattended,” they said.

They said that divisional engineers were no longer held accountable for the rising number of complaints in their telephone exchanges.

A divisional engineer told Dawn on condition of anonymity that the performance of low-ranking officials had become very poor since the privatization of the phone utility.

In June, Pakistan accepted an offer by Emirates Telecommunications to buy 26 per cent of state-owned PTCL for $2.59 billion. The country’s biggest privatization had been expected to raise $2 billion at best, but Etisalat far outbid China Mobile’s $1.409 billion offer and Singapore Telecommunications’ bid of $1.166 billion.

“They went on strike when the PTCL was being privatized. But the government broke their strike by calling the army and by creating disunity in their ranks. They are still resentful about the sell-off process. They express their resentment by refusing to play ball with us,” explained the divisional engineer.

He said that a divisional engineer could do very little if his subordinates, like linemen and SDOs, did not cooperate with him.

Sources said that while the number of unattended complaints had risen throughout Karachi, the region known as STR-III was particularly neglected.

A customer of the PTCL told Dawn that he had lodged complaints about the erratic performance of his phone (2729758) with the phone utility many times but to no avail.

“I have been experiencing cross-talk in this phone for the past two months. I lodged many complaints but no action was taken by the PTCL to rectify the fault,” he said.

Similarly, a resident of Defence said that the divisional engineer of the area telephone exchange told him that the reason why phones became faulty in Qayyumabad all too often was that there was a shortage of cable. “I have written to the headquarters for more cable, but my request went completely unheeded,” he quoted the divisional engineer as saying.

A resident of Korangi said his phone number remained out of order for long. “I lodged many complaints but the PTCL took no action. It was only when I pulled a few strings, my faulty phone connection was rectified,” he admitted.

However, a PTCL spokesman said that all those complaints which entered the PTCL fault rectification system were rectified sooner or later. “If it is a minor fault, it is rectified almost immediately. But if it is a cable fault, only the divisional engineer or the general manager of the area could explain why faults remained unattended for long,” he argued.