It's saddening that hundreds of distributors, distributing SIM cards, have been sacked reportedly by the Home Ministry and Private Cellular Companies. I fail to understand why the distributors have been sacked for no fault of theirs. The companies have given clear-cut guidelines to the distributors regarding collection of documents from the subscribers who intend to have a SIM card. The distributors strictly go by those guidelines and issue SIM cards. All of a sudden, the distributors are asked to shut their business, for, “they have not followed the norms.” Nowhere have the companies told the subscribers where the norms were flouted. It seems to be a big conspiracy against the Kashmiri distributors who have been doing tremendous service for the outside mobile companies in the Valley. Sacking distributors would mean end of employment to hundreds of people, mainly youth. These people have set up small offices and brought other paraphernalia by taking loans from different banks or by selling the jewelery of their family members. By sacking them, you are pushing them to the wall and making a ground for them to turn frustrated. This punishment has no reason. It is the moral responsibility of the Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, to take the mobile companies to task because they earn millions of rupees annually from the state. Also it needs to be looked into as to why hundreds of SIM cards were recently blocked because two subscribers had a same SIM of a particular company. If outside you can have six SIM cards on a same name, why can’t we have two here? Such issues are really concerning people and must be the priority of the state government.

Abdul Wahid
Chadoora, Budgam

Lastupdate on : Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST