The government has admitted on the floor of the National Assembly that it has been monitoring social media platforms and disrupting the internet due to security concerns.
Responding to criticism from the opposition over the slow internet speed and alleged restrictions on social media during the National Assembly session, Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Division Sajid Mehdi said that we cannot leave social media unbridled like other countries.
He said that Pakistan is currently facing security threats, so we will have to adopt some kind of strategy.
The matter came up for discussion when the House considered a notice of concern filed by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F)’s Alia Kamran regarding the internet outage in the country.
Sajid Mehdi, while attributing the internet outage to ‘security reasons’, said that the government is trying to regulate the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and 37,000 VPNs have been registered so far.
It may be recalled that the Parliamentary Secretary was responding to the notice of attention regarding the slow speed of the internet in the absence of Minister of State for Information Technology Shaza Fatima Khawaja, who later arrived in the House to present the ‘Digital Nation Pakistan Bill 2024’.
During this, the Parliamentary Secretary admitted that the reason for the slow speed of the internet across the country is the lack of ‘modern technology’. He said that Pakistan has only 15 percent fiber cable while 40 percent of India’s network is on fiber cable.
Earlier, Minister of State Shaza Fatima had admitted while addressing the National Broadband Network Forum that the speed of the internet is not available in Pakistan, as it should be, the internet has become a very important necessity today.
The Minister of State said that there are cyber security challenges in Pakistan, cyber security attacks occur on a daily basis, the responsibility of cyber security and data protection is also ours, we are paying full attention to it.
He further said that work is underway on the National Fiberization Policy, the auction of 5G spectrum will be held in April, the auction of 5G spectrum and 4G will be improved.
During the National Assembly session, Sajid Mehdi claimed that these issues will be resolved after the auction of 5G spectrum by April next year, he said that he is making this announcement based on the statement of the Minister of State for Technology.
JUI (F)’s Alia Kamran had said in her speech that the rulers are afraid of the internet and have always tried to control it. She accused the government of trying to control social media through VPN registration and installation of digital firewalls, thereby destroying the IT industry.
Questioning the move to register VPN users in the absence of law and rules, she said that the parliamentary secretary has admitted that they are controlling social media through the VPN registration process.
The JUI-F member of the National Assembly cited the recently released Global Index report on internet speed, according to which Pakistan is ranked 141st out of 158 countries.
He added that in a country where people are not able to use 3G and 4G internet connections, the government is talking about auctioning 5G licenses.
