A committee appointed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to review the Telecom Reorganization Amendment Bill has proposed a series of major amendments designed to address the public and parliamentary criticism that forced a halt to the legislation’s progress in the Senate, with the revised proposals centred on strengthening protections for citizens’ private property and making the bill more acceptable to all stakeholders before it proceeds further.
The committee, which includes Minister for Information Technology Shaza Fatima Khawaja among its members, has held two meetings to deliberate on the proposed legislation following its deferral by the Senate Standing Committee on IT and Telecom, where senators from coalition and opposition parties alike raised strong objections to provisions that critics said would allow telecom companies to access private land and install infrastructure without adequate consent or compensation frameworks. The bill had also attracted significant criticism on social media, with the Rs. 50 million fine under Section 27B for property owners refusing access to telecom companies drawing particular public attention and amplifying the urgency of the government’s review.
Among the committee’s key recommendations, the most consequential is that private property should only be used for telecom infrastructure installations with the explicit consent of the property owner, a direct response to the central concern that drove both parliamentary and public opposition to the bill in its original form. The committee has also proposed that compensation for the use of private property should be determined through mutual agreement between the property owner and the relevant telecom company, rather than being imposed under a regulatory framework that critics argued gave property owners insufficient standing in negotiations with large operators. The panel has further recommended a broader review of provisions related to fiberization and the installation of other telecom infrastructure on private land, and has proposed that where telecom towers are installed on government land, the government should receive appropriate compensation that protects the state’s financial interests.
The revised draft prepared by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication will be reviewed by the committee before its formal report is submitted to the Prime Minister, with the overarching objective of producing a final version of the bill that balances the telecom sector’s legitimate infrastructure deployment needs against the constitutional rights of citizens and the financial interests of the state. The amendments, if adopted, would mark a significant departure from the bill’s original framing, resolving what had been the most contentious aspect of the legislation while preserving its stated goal of accelerating fiberization and 5G infrastructure rollout across Pakistan.
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