Collection of 10 percent Telecom Service Fees is secure and transparent
To address questions and concerns raised by Afghan citizens regarding the 10% percent Telecom Service Fees recently charged by the government on Telecom end users Minister of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) H.E. Abdur razaq Vahidi attended a press conference, which was held on Saturday, October 3, 2015 at MCIT’s conference room.
Opening the Conference, H.E Minister Vahidi thanked the journalist for their on time and presence at MCIT conference room and appreciated their important role as the key supporters of the good and open governance.
He then talked about the new mechanisms adopted by MCIT to ensure required transparency in the process of the telecom service fees deduction and reporting by MNOs. “Based on recent legal decree of H.E the president and the joint procedure, the MCIT’s role has been defined as the technical facilitator to ensure transparency in the process. We do respect concerns and questions raised by Afghan citizens regarding the telecom tax and therefore, today were are here to make sure that every Afghani paid as Telecom Tax is counted and transferred to government treasury”, explained the Minister.
Mr. Vahidi informed the Media about a new tracking and monitoring system recently designed and tested saying: “After many days of non-stop hard work , fortunately we have now a Semi-Real Time Data Management System in place that can give us detailed information on the number of subscribers and varying trends of the market activities; For example with MTN, AWCC and Salaam data we have found that more than 76% of subscribers are those who have charged 50 Afgs one time top up and the tax collected by these subscribers forms 62% of total amount.”
Then, Mr. Vahidi provided information on the average total telecom tax collected from the companies since the beginning, and highlighted the measures adopted by MCIT to exactly track the process. He added: “Currently, we are going to connect the system mentioned above to the bailing systems of the MNOs. By this, we can have direct access to information of individual's information such as phone number and exact amounts of tax deducted which is precisely updated three times a day. For future development, a public monitoring module will be designed on the systems”.
In order to ensure full transparency until the full system is launched, Mr. Vahidi assured the Media that MCIT is going to operationalize available system through a fully dynamic website which enable the assigned technical team to get MNOs data on regular basis during the day. In addition, Mr. Vahidi, appealed Afghan citizens to strongly cooperate with the government by a technical process that can cross check the information on the tax deducted from them. “Mobile customers can send the information (scratch card number * serial number * amount #) through SMS to 997. Then, system will automatically match the information with data shared earlier by operators. If it is matched then system will assure user by sending a message e.g. "thanks, the tax was collected by government", added Mr. Vahidi.
Following Mr. Vahidi technical explanations, the journalists asked a number of additional questions on various around the mandate, performance, quality and new initiatives and plans of the MCIT and ATRA. The questions were answered by Mr. Vahidi and other members of the panel, and in the end, the MCIT Minister once again, thanked the journalists, and asked them to keep in touch with MCIT’s Media and Communications Officer for further enquiries regarding future developments and also, instructed the MCIT spokesperson to remain accessible and responsive to Media outlets and Journalists in the future.
