Awais calls for concerted efforts to check mobile phone thefts
By Saad Saud Zubair

ISLAMABAD—Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari Thursday called for coordinated efforts to check a growing number of incidents involving mobile phone theft which he said was leading to several other street crimes and violence.
“While the government is committed to a rapid growth of the telecom sector, we also have the foremost responsibility of ensuring the safety of life and property of our citizens,” he said in a keynote address to a seminar on ‘EIR - Addressing mobile phone theft issue’ organized by a GSM operator at a local hotel.
The minister said it was natural for a country with mobile phone users touching almost 20 million mark to witness a record number of mobile phone thefts and snatchings. However, the government was aware of the increasing number of mobile phone thefts and robberies the prime minister had personally directed the Sindh governor to adopt all possible measures to check mobile phone thefts in Karachi which recorded 1,603 incidents of mobile snatching in the month of July 2005 alone.
He said the government in coordination with the cellular mobile operators, law enforcement agencies and citizen police liaison committee, had made efforts at local level in Karachi and some measure of success had been achieved as well. “However, the gravity of the situation calls for an integrated homogenous and uniform solution across the country,” he added.
Awais Leghari told the seminar that following research and study of the national needs and the best international practices and thorough discussions with the mobile operators, the ministry had realized there was a need to introduce theft deterrent databases across all the GSM networks of the country with country specific synchronization mechanism through GSMA in Dublin, Ireland.
He said a detailed report enumerating policy, regulatory and administrative measures and a process for interface of provincial and local law enforcement agencies along with a mass awareness drive had already been circulated among stakeholders and the timelines in this regard had been established.
He said the government was already moving quickly on the number portability issue and efforts were afoot to bring all the mobile phone operators data at one point to allow end-users to port their number from operator to another within the next four months. “We hope to use that data as effectively as we can, to devise a mechanism for checking the incidents of mobile phone thefts,” he said.
The minister said the government would encourage any effort from any player, including the PTA, to come up with a system that could take care of the mobile phone thefts. He said the proceeds of Universal Service Fund which would become functional next month, could also be used for such projects.
He believed seminars and discussions would be instrumental in building final consensus and ensuring optimal and effective participation from all stakeholders to make the proposed solution a success. “All of us who have a role to play in making this solution a success should realize our responsibilities and ensure maximum inter-stakeholder cooperation for battling this menace,” he added.
Nooruddin Baqai, member telecom to Ministry of Information Technology, in his detailed presentation on ‘Mobile handset theft: towards a comprehensive deterrence policy and solution’ called for adoption of an appropriate technical solution, effective campaign of mass awareness on the issue, appropriate strategy by law enforcement agencies to counter phone thefts and a greater sense of social responsibility from mobile handset vendors in ensuring a maximum utility of the proposed solution.