Tag cellular telephone

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications on Tuesday extended the deadline to register mobile phones by 10 days.

A day earlier, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had announced that unregistered, smuggled and stolen phones will be blocked on January 15. However, on the directives of the Senate committee the deadline has been extended till January 25.

The parliamentary panel chaired by Senator Rubina Khalid was briefed regarding its decision to block unregistered mobile phones.

Senator Khalid said the people are facing difficulties pertaining to mobile registration and directed the PTA to make the system less complicated.

The duration for registration of mobile devices being brought to Pakistan needs to be extended for at least two months, the chairperson of the parliamentary committee recommended.

Earlier, the committee was briefed regarding the streamlining process for collection of customs duty on cell phones on arrival at all airports, and extension in the time period to block unregistered mobile phones.

The meeting was informed that in order to create facilitation via technology, PTA has already implemented an online portal system allowing all concerned to sign-up with ease from their location via web services.

Upon submission of a request, the online portal system (which is fully automated) verifies the IMEI against database to ensure it is unique, not duplicated/cloned or reported stolen. Upon verification, the system whitelists the unique IMEI.

Further, the committee was informed that for international passengers, some options are being developed in consultation with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) for registration of mobile devices on arrival in Pakistan and duty collection. These include online registration of devices by individuals/international passengers on http://dirbs.pta.gov.pk/drs.

In line with FBR baggage rules, international travelers are allowed to bring one mobile device which is duty/tax exempted as part of personal use import, the committee was further told. All such international passengers will be able to register their devices within 15 days of arrival in Pakistan through the online system.

Moreover, the individuals will be able to pay applicable customs duty/tax on devices through all major banks, online banking, ATM and through their mobile wallets.

For payment of customs duty and taxes on more than one device, upon entering he Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), Passport No, IMEIs and mobile specs, the system will generate a Payment Slip Identity (PSID) code along with duty and taxes which will be used to make the payment.

The modules for Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) stakeholders being introduced include International Pakistani Travelers, local (received device through courier), local (observed as valid after due date to pay custom duty to FBR) and foreigner.

The meeting was also informed that the implementation of DIRBS had been extended till January 15, 2019. However, the committee recommended that the deadline regarding implementation of DIRBS may be further extended.

Following this, the deadline for registration of mobile phones was extended by 10 days till January 25.

Minister for IT and Telecom Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Secretary IT Maroof Afzal, senators, including Taj Afridi, Muhammad Ateeq Shaikh, Maulana Ghafoor Haideri and representatives of the relevant ministry, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Customs and Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) attended the meeting.

ISLAMABAD: Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday said overseas Pakistanis will have to pay duty if they bring more than one mobile phone to the country.

Responding to a tweet questioning the government’s decision to ban overseas Pakistanis from carrying cellphones to the country, Chaudhry clarified, “Overseas Pakistanis can bring mobile phones to the country. Tax will only be imposed on additional mobile phone sets.”

“We are importing mobile phones worth $2 billion. If we do not impose taxes on this then how will we run?”

The information minister added, “The tax on phones worth less than $60 is almost negligible and on expensive phones there’s a 38% duty. This is the most appropriate taxation. We will have to adopt the tax culture.”

Earlier, Minister of State for Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar stated that overseas Pakistanis can carry only one phone in a year without having to pay customs duty. Further, Azhar had said that overseas Pakistanis can bring a maximum of five phones as per personal baggage rules, however, they will have to pay duty on the four extra handsets.

PAKPATTAN: A Pakpattan police officer was suspended on Monday after a video of him dancing with a woman went viral on social media, prompting officials to take notice and launch an inquiry into the incident.

Inspector Arshad who is stationed at Kalyana police station in Pakpattan came under fire after two videos of him went viral.

In the first video, the police officer can be seen depicting a Bollywood villain while delivering the dialogue from Anil Kapoor’s 2013 film Shootout at Wadala.

“Do waqt ki roti kamata hoon, panch waqt ki namaaz padhta hoon … isse zyada meri zaroorat nahi, aur mujhe khareedne ki teri aukaad nahi,” he says in the video.

In the second video, the inspector is seen dancing with a woman to an Indian song.

After the videos went viral, District Police Officer Pakpattan Maria Mehmood suspended the officer and ordered that an inquiry be launched an inquiry on an official level.

Speaking to Geo News, Inspector Arshad said, “The video was in my cell phone and was uploaded on social media by his nephew.”

ISLAMABAD:(media92news) The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will seek approval from the cabinet to legalise smuggled inactive phones on a payment of duty, a senior tax official told media92news on Thursday.

The tax machinery estimates that import of illegal phones in the market causes heavy revenue losses to the federal exchequer annually.

“We will submit the summary in the next cabinet meeting,” the official said requesting anonymity.

As per the proposed plan, the tax authority has worked out a plan to tax all those smuggled phones which are currently inactive and still in shops as unsold stock.
A cut-off date within the range of one to one and half months will be announced for owners of such phones for availing the scheme to legalise it, the official said.

Past the deadline, the official said, all those phones will become redundant on which duties are not paid at the nearest customs point.

Such phone sets, either smuggled before the deadline, or after that, will not be activated.

However, phone sets currently in use whether legally imported or smuggled will be exempted from the payment of duty.

The payment of duty on smuggled phone will depend upon the category they belonged to.

In 2017-18, Pakistan’s legal imports value of mobile phones reached $847.656 million in 2017-18.

Earlier, the imports had crossed the $1bn mark when there was no duty under the free trade agreement with China, or a very negligible duty applicable from other countries. The government has recently revised the duty structure and imposed regulatory duty on imports of mobile phones.

Consequently, the legal imports have started declining, mainly because of a rise in smuggling of mobile phones.

In May, the Pakistan Tele­communi­cations Authority (PTA) launched the Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) mechanism to counter the spread of substandard and used phones being smuggled into the country.

The used and refurbished mobile phones are being smuggled into the country using different channels.

According to the PTA, nearly 160m compliant and non-compliant mobile devices were active on all the networks before the launch of DIRBS.

Currently, the FBR has notified new rates of regulatory duties on import of new mobile sets. The rate of regulatory duty is Rs250 per mobile set worth less than $60.

The rate of regulatory duty is 10pc of the value of mobile phone if its value ranges between $60-130. The rate of regulatory duty will be 20pc of the value if it is more than $130 per set.

The unregistered mobile phones will be those devices that are not registered with the Global System for Mobile Association.

JHANG: A teacher has been arrested for sexually harassing a student and making a video two months back.

According to the police, Anwar-ul-Qamar, a schoolteacher in an area of Jhang, sexually harassed a 13-year-old girl and shot a video.

Following the incident, Qamar’s mobile phone went missing and the person who got hold of the device uploaded the video on social media.

Minister of Human Rights Shireen Mazari also watched the video and took to Twitter, stating she sought a report from her ministry over the incident.

She further wrote that the incident happened in Toba Tek Singh and that Qamar has confessed to his crime before the police.

He was handed over to the police in Toba Tek Singh where an FIR in the case was registered at Pir Mahal police station.

The accused had fled Jhang after the video went viral, but was arrested from Lahore.

Mobile phone service has been partially suspended in several cities across the country, including Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, on Thursday.

Cellular service has been suspended on the routes of the 9th Muharram procession.

Strict security measures have been taken for the processions and contingents of Rangers and Police have been deployed near Imambargahs across the country.

Pillion riding has also been banned till 10th Muharram.

The main Ashura procession in Lahore will begin from Imambargah Pando Street, Islampura while in Karachi it will start from Nishtar Park and in Islamabad from Sector G-6-II Imambargah.

Further, the Pak-Afghan border at Chaman and Pak-Iran border at Taftan have been closed for two days.

Residents of Karachi also experienced partial suspension of mobile phone service in the areas where mourning processions were passing through on Wednesday.

Khaled al-Idlibi was still speeding away with his brother perched on the back of his motorbike when he heard the air strike that levelled his neighbours’ house in northwest Syria.

Those crucial extra minutes were thanks to a warning system that could help save civilian lives in an expected regime offensive on Idlib province, home to the last significant rebel-held area.

The Sentry programme, launched two years ago by two Americans and a Syrian coder, uses human observers and a network of sensors to compute a predicted impact location when Syrian or allied Russian warplanes take off.

The resulting estimate can then trigger air raid sirens near the target zone and send warnings to mobile phone applications, giving residents more time to take cover.

Idlibi, a 23-year-old media activist, lives in Maaret al-Shureen, a rebel-controlled town in Idlib.

On June 10 last year, he was picking up belongings he had left behind while fleeing from an earlier air strike when his smartphone suddenly lit up.

“I received an alert on Telegram that a new warplane had taken off towards the same area,” he said, recounting that he and his brother jumped on their motorbike and rode to about a kilometre from the predicted impact spot.

Idlibi said “only three children were wounded that day” and estimated that up to 15 lives may have been saved by the Sentry alert.
‘Huge spike in use’

First launched in August 2016, the Sentry technology has become a sort of weather forecast service for many Syrians.

The system´s creators say that it has proved its worth, including during the intense air campaign against the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta, earlier this year.

“We saw a huge spike in use as the campaign ramped up,” John Jaeger, a co-founder of the Hala Systems firm that developed the technology used in Sentry, told AFP.

Jaeger, a former US diplomat and technologist who was looking for new ways to prevent civilian deaths in Syria, created the system with US entrepreneur Dave Levin and a Syrian coder whose identity is kept secret.

The system — which Jaeger says is currently funded by Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark — requires a human network on the ground to monitor areas and set up sensors.

It is therefore limited in which zones it can cover. It does not, for example, provide updates on US-led coalition warplanes targeting the Islamic State group in air strikes that have also routinely killed civilians.

Hala Systems estimates that its warning system is available to around two million people in Syria, most of them in Idlib.

Jaeger said that, while reliable statistics were hard to come by, data analysis showed that 27 percent fewer people died in air strikes on areas where Sentry was used.
8 minutes

Residents who get an alert via social media, local radio stations or the air raid sirens that Hala triggers remotely have an average of eight minutes to seek shelter, Jaeger said.

The White Helmets, a network of rescuers in rebel-held areas, are actively involved in the development of Sentry, a technology that gives their staff extra time to mobilise.

“The civil defence´s technicians are trying to develop this service so that it reaches civilians even without internet,” the warning system´s coordinator in northern Syria, Ibrahim Abu Laith, told AFP in Idlib.

He said 191 awareness sessions were held in recent weeks across parts of northern Syria vulnerable to government air strikes, so civilians know how to access Sentry.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, more than 350,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian conflict.

That figure includes around 33,000 civilians killed by regime and Russian air strikes and helicopter attacks.

Jaeger said he had not detected any attempt to disable the Sentry system by Syria´s regime.

“They don´t say they support it but I think they should. It´s nobody´s goal to kill as many civilians as possible,” he said.