The federal government has decided to take legal action once morest the telecom operators and others who created obstacles in deactivating the mobile phone SIMs of more than 15 lakh non-filers.
According to a Tribune report, this decision was taken on the occasion of Federal Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb’s visit to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) headquarters. Attorney General for Pakistan Mansoor Usman Awan was also present in the meeting.
Read more: Millions of mobile phone SIMs will be banned or not, PTA statement comes out
The FBR informed the finance minister regarding its decision to deactivate the mobile phone SIMs of 56,671 people, who were not appearing in the list of active taxpayers but were due to do so by 2023, government officials said. are responsible for filing income tax returns for
The matter of non-cooperation by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on the pressure of telecom operators in the implementation of the decision was also discussed.
It was decided that the government will take action once morest anyone who tries to create obstacles in bringing these non-filers into the income tax net.
Also Read: Orders issued to block sims of non-filers
The Finance Minister told the meeting participants that the Army Chief has also supported the decision to block SIMs of non-filers and no one has any reason to oppose the move.
In a news statement, the PTA advocated striking a balance between the FBR’s move to disable SIMs and protecting the investment of telecom operators.
Although the government will deactivate the SIMs of more than 5 million people, there is no restriction on them buying new SIMs.
Read more: Five lakh SIMs will be shut down soon, electricity connection is also feared
FBR had issued notices to 2.4 lakh people but it has taken action once morest only 506,000 people in the first phase.
A senior FBR official said that a person can have more than one SIM card and all such connections will be disconnected immediately.
He said that due to the order of FBR, regarding 10 lakh to 15 lakh SIMs will be blocked.
#Mobile #companies #refuse #block #millions #SIMs #legal #battle #Business #Economy
2024-05-04 22:35:39
