Grey trafficking causing huge loss to national exchequer
KARACHI: Kamran Khan in his programme ‘Aaj Kamran Khan Kay Sath’ on Tuesday said that there were illegal telephone exchanges in the country that were causing a huge loss to the national exchequer.
These exchanges were used in receiving overseas calls and for their onward transmission. These calls bypassed the legal exchange system. The total duration of the overseas calls to Pakistan was 550 million minutes a month, but 20 percent of these calls went through illegal telephone exchanges. The government did manage to crack down on those illegal exchanges, but they had not been totally eliminated, and some were still functioning. In the last one year, the government had earned foreign exchange of over $720 million on account of international calls.
Kamran Khan said that the fight against terror across the world was not restricted to fighting the terrorists on the streets and at their hideouts, but it was also being fought on the cyberspace. Terrorist organisations were using the internet for propaganda purposes and for recruitment. This was a new frontier in the fight against terror. Many countries had drafted laws to prevent the internet from being abused. They had also formed specialist departments to counter the use of the internet for violent purposes. Pakistan also faced a threat from the increasing influence of the terror outfits on the internet, but the country did not have effective laws or skills to counter the influence of the terror outfits on the net.
In another segment of the programme, Kamran Khan said that a meeting between the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Pakistan Army Major General Amir Riaz, and his Indian counterpart Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia took place at the Wagah border.
The meeting was arranged by the Pakistani DGMO who had invited his Indian counterpart to visit Pakistan to observe the arrangements that could help maintain peace at the Line of Control (LoC).
Kamran Khan recalled that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, during a meeting in New York, had decided about the meeting of the two countries military officials.
In a different segment of the programme, Kamran Khan said that a few terrorist incidents took place on the occasion of the Chehlum of Hazrat Imam Hussain (AS), yet the day passed without a major catastrophe. The security forces must have taken a sigh of relief because it was being anticipated that the terrorists might have had a plan to create mayhem on the occasion. Nevertheless, a police van escorting a Chehlum procession in Mansehra came under attack in which a policeman died while four blasts took place in Karachi. Four people died in the blasts in Orangi Town.
Commenting on the corruption scandals during the tenure of the previous government, Kamran Khan said that just before the term of the previous government came to an end, two major corruption scandals appeared on the scene. One related to the Employees Old-Age Benefit Institution (EOBI) and the other to the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP). In the case of the latter, the money meant to be used for increasing exports was employed. For that purpose, the laws of the TDAP were altered which was aimed at extending trade subsidies illegally. Under the said category, Rs5 billion was distributed among fifty fictitious companies in two years.
Kamran Khan said that after the PML-N government came to power, the FIA had acted against those fifty companies. The main thing that emerged during the FIA investigation was that former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and his commerce minister Makhdoom Amin Faheem had had front men who had been posted on significant posts and who managed to sneak out of the country before investigation against them began.
The FIA wanted to interview Yusuf Raza Gilani and Makhdoom Amin Faheem. It remained to be seen whether the law took its course against the two PPP stalwarts or the government let the matter go under the pretext of political reconciliation.
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