Pakistan to help regional countries in developing regulatory regime: Minister

 

Islamabad: Minister of State for Information Technology, Ishaq Khan Khakwani has said that Pakistan has extended help to many countries in the past in their efforts to develop regulatory regime. We will offer such assistance to other countries in future as well. He was speaking at the closing ceremony of three-day Workshop on â??Implementing Mobile Number Portability (MNP)â? organized by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) here in Islamabad under the International Telecom Union (ITU) Centre of Excellence (CoE) PTA Node.

He said that mutual cooperation and assistance is the corner stone of Government of Pakistanâ??s Policy. We strongly believe that the developing countries can learn from each others experiences as we have similar environments.

He said we are happy that ITU has selected Pakistan from the Asia-Pacific region for establishing the Center of Excellence Node on Telecom Policy & Regulation. This will provide an excellent platform for regional cooperation and sharing of experiences among member countries.

The Minister said that Pakistan is one of the few countries of Asia-Pacific region where MNP regime has successfully been introduced. MNP is considered one of the primary factors for creating competition in telecom sector. He said that after successfully implementing MNP regime in Pakistan, PTA is equipped with the adequate expertise of planning and implementing MNP and it can share its experiences with other countries. He hoped that the workshop was useful for the participants in improving their knowledge on the subject. He also appreciated PTA efforts for the creation of this node and hosting the workshop on an important subject.

On this occasion, Chairman PTA, Maj. Gen. (R) Shahzada Alam Malik said that ITU has reposed confidence in Pakistan by establishing its Centre in the country. This three-day training Workshop was organized by PTA Node of ITU Asia Pacific Centre of Excellence Network. This node has been created with the objective to assist developing countries of Asia-Pacific region in enhancing capacities of their human resource. He said that from this node, we will offer courses on different Policy and Regulatory issues each year to the countries of Asia-Pacific region.

Chairman said that Pakistan is one of the few countries of Asia-Pacific region where MNP regime has successfully been introduced. Basing on our experience, we had selected this topic for the training Workshop and participants must have benefited a lot from this programme.

The Minister for IT&T distributed certificates and shields among the participants on this occasion. It may be mentioned that Workshop on â??Implementing Mobile Number Portabilityâ? was attended by 46 participants from 15 different countries of Asia-Pacific, Arab and African regions including Pakistan. During the Workshop, renowned experts from UK, USA and other countries made presentations on MNP process and provided useful guidelines for its implementation.

 

(Khurram Ali Mehran)

Deputy Director (PR)