$50 penalty per fake SIM to be slapped within a week

Tarana Halim has said selling unauthorised, biometrically verified SIM cards will invite $50 penalty per SIM.

The proposal will come into force within seven days and is aimed at curbing the use of SIM cards that are not registered with bona fide users.

On Thursday, the state minister of posts and telecommunications attended a meeting at the BTRC office to draw up the future course of action following the biometric registration of SIMs earlier this year.

In 2012, the government had issued a notification aimed at curbing the sale of prevaricated SIM cards.

A penalty of $50 per such SIM was also announced then. The move never proved much of a success.

Tarana refuted allegations that millions of unauthorised SIMs were in circulation.

"The number of unauthorised SIMs will not number more than a few thousands."

She said the government intends to deactivate these few prevaricated SIMS as well.

"We are monitoring all operators closely. If any SIM has been inadvertently registered with the wrong biometric details the operators will have to bear penalty of $50 per SIM. A letter in this regard from the BTRC will be sent out to operators soon."

So far, 120 million SIMs have been registered with biometric details, she said.

The BTRC, however, has said cases of collecting multiple fingerprint samples from unsuspecting customers have been reported.

Three Airtel employees were arrested in June on charges of issuing botched SIM cards.

BTRC Chairman Shahjahan Mahmood told journalists that the number of illegal international calls has gone down following the exercise of collecting biometric data for SIM card registration.