BILAL HUSSAIN
Once again the union home ministry is going tough with cellular service providers in Jammu and Kashmir, as the telcos have started ceasing distributorship agreements in Kashmir. The distributors have threatened to launch valley wide protests here on Tuesday.
Ceasing of agreements would render tens of hundreds of kiosks without income to sustain their livings. “I am in this business from past three years and of sudden the mobile service operator has served me a termination notice. This is the only source of my income I would be left without any source of earning,” said a mobile booth owner, who distributes SIM cards of a telecom company here.
The move has evoked sharp criticism from the people associated with the trade. “If the companies wouldn’t revoke their order we would be left with no option but to come on streets and protest against this unwarranted notice,” said another local kiosk owner, who wished not to be named.
Earlier, in the month of October 2009 the ministry of home affairs has decided that no prepaid mobile connections would be issued and existing prepaid SIM cards would not be renewed in J&K after Nov 1, 2009. The ministry has asked the Department of Telecommunications to take appropriate action to implement the decision.
Experts here believe that the decision is not going to impact the over all profitability of the telecom operators functional here but the move would leave thousands of youth jobless.
To mention, according to earlier reports BSNL, a public sector telecommunication company, currently has a customer base of over twelve lakh subscribers, Bharti Airtel, has got the highest customer base of over 19 lakh in the state, Dishnet Wireless has eleven lakh subscribers in the state and the new entrant in the state, Vodafone Essar has a customer base of over a lakh. There are over 38 lakh prepaid mobile phone subscribers in the state.
Distributors of the private mobile operators like Aircel, Airtel, RCom, Tatas, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, told Kashmir Times on Tuesday they have been served termination notices that without earlier intimation, even they haven’t bothered to server us any reason.
According to a close source in a private cellular company, the operators have terminated around 164 distributorship agreements in the Valley. The notices were served to several distributors by operators on Sunday evening blaming them of breaching the agreement.
One of the notices served to a kiosk owner reads, “Since you have violated and acted in breach of the terms and conditions of agreement, please take notice that in terms of clause 19 & clause 13 of the afore-mentioned agreement, the Company hereby terminates the said agreements dated 1st September 2007 & 30th April 2008 with immediate effect, without prejudice to any of its rights under the said agreements and subject to the consequences of termination as envisaged therein; and amongst others, all rights granted to you for issuance of SIMs and providing other services under the aforementioned agreement stand withdrawn. You are hereby advised to raise claims, if any, and settle your accounts within a period of seven days.”
The home secretary G K Pillai has directed the telecom operators to sack the distributors, who follow the rules set by the Department of Telecommunication [DoT], sources told KT.
However, telecoms here believe that the agreements of those distributors are being ceased who do not follow the rules and regulations of the DoT.
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