How not to regularize anything
It is a norm for any government to try various methods to restructure and reform industries. This is mainly done through rigorous testing, considerable debate and inputs from related and concerned departments and legal fraternities over the proposed goals. The intention behind such policies is to formulate a comprehensive policy that is capable of answering all the questions and queries that will arise after the policy is implemented. The loopholes are plugged through monitoring and enforcement after the policy implementation. As you have already understood after reading that this is going to take a very long time but the overall result is a policy that everyone agrees with and is beneficial in the long run.
The same was expected when Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), enformed the policy of mobile phone regularization. It was celebrated and praised by many as it targeted smugglers and technology underdogs who were eating away a large chunk of revenue. Now everyone had to pay a tax in order to use the phone in Pakistan. There is no doubt that the intentions of making such a policy were genuine and to a large extent, and it achieved desired goals, as the data released by the PTA showed a decrease in smuggled phones. However, the policy failed to curb the corrupt practices on the pretext of failure to monitor policy implementation and enforcement. The result is the exploitation of consumers who want to own a phone but are unable to buy a genuine phone without either being scammed or paying hefty registration fees.
The failure to enforce the law and monitor the market situation after the implementation of policy led to the emergence of shady market practices where expensive devices, mainly Android phones, are tampered with and their IMEI numbers are swapped with cheaper models. These devices are then registered with PTA after paying a small fee as compared to a soul-sucking tax for a genuine IMEI registration. For example, a Samsung NOTE-9 phone registered with PTA with its original IMEI number would cost 40000 rupees in addition to the device price. The same phone if tempered and registered with software would only cost 7000 to 8000 rupees. Now, who would not like to do this. However, the phones continue to work until the software starts to glitch and eventually stops working. Some unfortunate consumers lose the money they have spent on such devices. This has happened mainly because the registration fees and taxes are so outrageous that even an ordinary device turns into an expensive one after registration.
On one side the government is trying to bring more and more people under the network connectivity umbrella and on the other hand, unplanned and unorganized policies, like the PTA registration, is decreasing the effectiveness of such policies.
The solution to such policy failure is simple, review and reimplement with taking inputs from concerned agencies. By lowering the tax regime it is hoped that not only this will decrease the incidents of frauds but also will help increase the connectivity. While PTA is busy charging the customers for the phones they desire, markets like Hafeez center and Hall road are reaping the real benefits.
