KARACHI: Fly-by-night cable operators in the city are once again on the run. Police have initiated an operation ostensibly against those cable operators who run Indian channels and movies on their networks. The question, however, is: who has empowered the police to do that?
According to the officials of the recently-established Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), the police have not been asked to take action against the cable operators for running Indian movies and channels.
Pemra’s official in charge of cable TV operations, Yousuf Aziz, told Dawn from Islamabad that the Authority had not asked the police to clamp down on cable operators. “We had merely requested the police to take action against those cable operators who are not registered with Pemra and are operating unlawfully.”
The police official in Karachi who was tasked to crack down on the cable operators showing Indian movies and channels told Dawn that he had been directed by his high-ups to take the action. “Every police station has intelligence officers who were entrusted with the task of gathering information about those cable operators who show Indian movies and channels. When we received the green light, we launched the crack-down and rounded up 33 cable operators.”
The police official added that the cable operators had been sent to jail under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance for three months.
Now, the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance is a handy piece of legislation. Legal experts point out that the police can take anybody into custody invoking this law. They add that this law infringes upon people’s civil liberties as guaranteed in the Constitution. Lawyer Zia Awan maintains that if the police had credible evidence against the cable operators, Pemra could have cancelled their licences or fined them. “But the police chose to invoke the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance because it leaves a lot of scope for gainful negotiations.”
Cable operators complain that following the crackdown the police are asking for more bribes. “Previously we were paying the police a certain amount of money on a monthly basis. Now the police want more because they know they can detain us and seize our equipment. They know very well that we run Indian movies and channels because we give connections to police stations as well,” said one cable operator who did not want to be named.
Most cable operators in the city are not registered with Pemra. (One of the cable operators that Dawn spoke to was not even aware of the fact that since May 15 Pemra, and not the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, had been monitoring the cable operators.) They understand that they will have to give money to the police and local, small-time criminals who they cannot mess with if they want to operate in an area smoothly.
As a result, the cable operators are not united. That is to say, they do not have one representative trade body to put their point of view in the event of a police operation. When contacted, the chairman of the All Pakistan Cable Operators Association said, willy nilly, that he condemned the police action. He, however, had hailed the PTA decision of putting a ban on Indian channels. Detractors of the PTA then pointed out — and their argument still holds water — that by proscribing the viewing of Indian channels the telecommunications regulator had deprived only the people of those channels. The well-heeled still have access to them thanks to the satellite dish.
TAILPIECE: Misfortune, it is said, never comes alone. As if a high-handed police operation against the cable operators was not enough, the city government is set to launch a clamp-down on them on Monday. The deputy district officer of the city government’s land and revenue department, Salman Faridi, told Dawn that from Monday a city government squad would cut the overhead wires of the cable operators in a bid to make them pay Rs50 per connection.
Mr Faridi said the cable operators had agreed to pay the sum to the defunct Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. But they had afterwards gone back on their word, saying that in Islamabad the cable operators paid Rs5 per connection.
If Pemra thinks that the job of regulation consists in receiving annual fees from the cable operators, it has got another thing coming. It should also protect the cable operators, most importantly from police excesses.