MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 30: A large number of people staged a protest demonstration in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Mirpur town on Wednesday calling for permission to all national and multinational mobile phone companies to launch their services throughout AJK without discrimination. The demonstration was held under the aegis of a joint forum of different organizations to draw the attention of the authorities towards what they called bottlenecks created by the Special Communications Organization (SCO) against multinational cellular companies to stop them from operating in the lucrative region.

Among the participants were included district bar association president Chaudhry Ali Muhammad Chacha, AJK Council member and People’s Party leader Sardar Sawar Khan, AJK Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Arshad Mughal, ex-president Zulfiqar Abbasi, Markazi Anjuman-e-Tajran president Sohail Shuja Mujahid and secretary-general Farooq Akhtar Qureshi, Muslim Conference leader Dr Mohammad Amin Chaudhry, and Jamaat-i-Islami leader Dr Riaz Ahmed. They marched through the streets, shouting slogans in support of their demand.

The telecom network in AJK is run by the SCO - a subsidiary of Pakistan army. The national and multinational mobile companies were not allowed in the area for so-called security reasons.

The SCO launched its own mobile phone network about two years ago in the towns of Muzaffarabad and Mirpur with limited coverage, which failed to satisfy subscribers.

Lately, when the northern parts of AJK were hit by the worst-ever natural calamity, the SCO’s mobile network also came under scathing criticism, compelling President Gen Pervez Musharraf to throw them open for multinational mobile companies to facilities quake survivors.

However, Mirpur, home to hundreds of thousands of British Kashmiris, was kept out of that facility which angered its residents. Attempts by some multinational mobile companies to install their apparatus in Mirpur were also thwarted by the SCO which claims to have upgraded its own mobile network recently though still restricted only to the AJK territory.

Addressing the demonstration at Shaheed Chowk, speakers criticized the SCO for its alleged expensive and poor service as compared to other mobile companies.

The SCO, they said, was depriving the people of AJK of the latest means of telecommunication in this era of latest information technology only to maintain its monopoly.