The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) guideline for re-verification of existing pre-paid customers in North-East is giving a tough time to the mobile subscribers in the region as almost all commonly available documents have been made unacceptable. To compound the hardship, the timeframe given by the Centre to undertake this “daunting” exercise too is very less.
In last couple of days, the region saw pre-paid mobile customers thronging to offices of various telecom service providers in a desperate attempt to save their mobile numbers from getting disconnected. Though the DoT deadline ended on January 19, mobile companies are still accepting documents from customers in a bid to lessen their hardships. However, no recharge will be allowed against numbers which have not yet provided the required documents.
Since, none of the region specific documents, like voter ID card, domicile certificate, certificate from village headman or panchayat, and so on are acceptable, it is feared that 80 per cent of the rural subscribers will fail to produce the required documents, and hence would go off the mobile loop.
As per the DoT notification, which was issued on October 20, at least 10 commonly available documents for identity proof, which were included in a similar 2009 notification, have been made unacceptable.
Terming it a “herculean task”, a senior official of a private telecom company told Business Standard: “Undertaking such a big exercise within 3 months in 7 states is a daunting task. Secondly, since documentation has been made very very stringent, what will rural people do? Most of them neither have arms license, or bank account, or driving license or passport, and for that matter, any of the documents required for identity and address proof. The government should have given us more time for this exercise and included at least few North-East specific documents, as had been allowed in the case of Jammu and Kashmir, as proof of identity and address.”
According to the official, North-East specific document should have been included “in the interest of the rural customers” as stringent documentation, coupled with paucity of time, is giving then immense hardship.
North-East has around 20 million mobile subscribers and out of that, 85 per cent of them are pre-paid customers.
The mobile companies said that since they were at an advanced stage of a similar previous re-verification exercise, as per DoT notification dated September 30, 2009, to ask them to undertake another set of such exercise in October 2010, that too within 3 months, was uncalled for.
Following the October 2010 DoT notification, the mobile companies again had to engage extra manpower to reach back to the pre-paid subscribers, many of whom are spread across remote areas of the region.
Moreover, if a large chunk of existing pre-paid customers fail to pass the re-verification exercise, that would affect the businesses of the mobile companies in the region, most of them having already made huge investments in last few years. Anything, such would have a ripple effect in the economy of the region and would lead to large scale unemployment.
