“The audits on two operators (Grameen and Robi) have already been conducted and those on others will also be carried out. Stern measures will be taken to realise the outstanding money (from the operators),” he said replying to a supplementary question from Jatiya Party MP Mujibul Haque (Chunnu) from Kishoreganj-3.
The minister, however, said whenever the government moved to take initiatives to realise the outstanding money from any mobile operator, the process get delayed as the operators go to the court. “This is why the outstanding money has remained unrealised for long,” he said.
Noting that the government has outstanding money from two mobile phone operators – Grameenphone and Robi, he said different measures were taken, including slashing 30 percent bandwidth capacity of GP and 15 percent of Robi.
Mustafa Jabbar said the GP has a total of Tk 12,800 crore in dues to the government.
The minister said the government faces problems in some cases if it goes to take any tough measure against the mobile phone operators to realise the outstanding from them.
For example, he said, if the government cancels the license of GP, the people will ultimately suffer.
“This is why we’ve to think about taking stern action considering people’s concern,” he added.