ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) has raised serious concerns about an increasing number of raids by the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) on legitimate software and IT-enabled services companies as part of an ongoing crackdown on scam centres.

In a statement on Monday, the association urged NCCIA to distinguish legitimate call centres and IT companies from scam centres, noting that it considers call centres legitimate and does not classify scam centres as call centres.

P@SHA has stressed that IT is the only industry in Pakistan growing consistently at around 20 per cent every year. IT exports reached a record $4.6 billion in FY26, up from $3.8bn in FY25.

Urges NCCIA to distinguish legitimate IT firms from scams

The government has set an ICT export target of $10bn by FY29 under Uraan Pakistan.

“Every single dollar is earned on trust,” said P@SHA Chairman Dr Shoaib Ahmed Khan, adding, “A foreign client who hears that his vendor’s office was raided and its servers taken away does not wait for the forensic report.”

He reminded the authorities that the IT industry is an entire ecosystem. “Pakistan produces more than 70,000 computing graduates every year, families invest their savings in their children’s education, and universities and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) build programmes around industry demand,” he observed.

The Ministry of IT and Telecom (MoITT), Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB), Ignite, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), and HEC are all working towards the export targets. Indiscriminate raids undo that collective effort and push skilled young people to leave the country.

He said the industry fully supported every lawful, evidence-based operation against scam centres.

However, the association has received complaints from member companies that teams entered offices without showing a warrant, held and questioned staff for hours, and took laptops, servers and phones into custody, even when nothing unlawful was found.

“Such actions halt client delivery, put confidential foreign client data at risk, and create fear among employees and investors,” Dr Khan added.

He stressed that the NCCIA has said some fraud operators register their businesses as IT companies; enforcement must differentiate the two carefully, instead of treating every office with laptops and a night shift as a suspect.

He suggested that NCCIA should verify a company’s status with PSEB and P@SHA through a designated focal person before any raid and should not conduct any media trial of IT-related companies.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2026