The miseries of Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) are far from over as the authority is experiencing large inner problems apart from exterior problems.
PTA is structural as authority has as authority has no budget at hands for its day to day expenses and even for salaries of the staff.
According to Pakistan Telecommunication Act 1996, the authority is dysfunctional since there is no member of the authority working after series of incidents including termination of wrongly appointed Chairman PTA, Farooq Awan who replaced Dr. Yaseen and the retirement of member finance and member technical in the first quarter of 2013.
“Under the law, only existing members can approve and finalize the annual budget of the telecom authority and there is no other way to get it approved from any other department. And for doing any such thing, the process will need to be endorsed by the parliament by changing the in-practice Telecom Act”, confirmed an official of PTA.
As per normal procedure, the budget is approved every year in the month of March and the source of budget allocation is the pool of revenue that PTA collects from the telecom sector in shape of various fees, tariffs, APC, fines etc.
Nearly, Rs. 700 million budget is approved every year for the functioning of authority.
Sources have confirmed that owing to internal conflicts and politicizing of PTA, the recovery has drastically declined from over Rs. 30 billion to almost Rs. 10 billion and the default has been swelled to over Rs. 80 billion.
Budget for the current year could not be approved in March due to the expiry of contracts of Member Finance and Member Technical. Existing Director General Finance made an effort to get the budget approved from the cabinet division which was declined by the latter.
An official of the PTA commented on the situation, “there is a crisis on the payment of salaries but authority is still performing day to day functions. He ruled out the reports of a complete dysfunctional of the authority”.
For the completion of authority, three times, government has advertised to hire the members of this autonomous body but all the advertisements including the latest one on June 14, 2013, have been cancelled by the courts on the basis of violating the Telecom Act and favoritism.
The latest advertisement was challenged in the Lahore High Court by Brain Telecommunication where the petitioner challenged the criteria of appointment as it had been altered to appoint some favorites.
As per telecom analysts, unless the authority is completed, PTA will remain in hot waters along with the financial constraints, a point of grave concern for the government who desires to overcome its financial obligation by auctioning 3G license in Pakistan.
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