IT was shocking for me to receive the monthly bill from the Pakistan Telecommu- nication Company Ltd. (PTCL) for March at my residence (No. 021-35846525, Block 24, Seaview Apartments, DHA phase V) becasue the service of its landline had remained completely non-functional in the last week of the month.

All requests for resumption were ignored. All I could get out of PTCL was a complaint identity (No. 78). If this was an insult, the PTCL has now gone one step further by adding injury to the mix. Why else would the body send me a bill for the entire month when the service was not available for a considerable part of it?

By the end of the first week of April, the phone at my residence was still silent. The lineman whom I could contact by chance told me that the wire had been stolen. I can only hope that someone at the PTCL will be reading these lines, and would feel like doing something about it.

Asif Noorani
Karachi

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2024