Babar Bhatti

The telecom honeymoon in Pakistan which lasted about 5 years (2002-2007) allowed Pakistani consumers to leapfrog over older landline based infrastructure and get cheap and quick access to modern telecommunication technology. The investors, telecom businesses and Pakistani treasury - all made good money and it was a win-win situation. It seems that the golden period for Pakistan telecom is over. The spike in teledensity and corresponding load on the new infrastructure is causing a number of service issues. To add fuel to fire the telecom rates for calls to Pakistan and within Pakistan have started rising, causing a lot of concerns. Consider the following points from the last few months:

Deceptive advertisements by Mobile Companies
Rise in local call charges by PTCL
Calls to Pakistan made more expensive
PTCL forces Pakistan package on its customers
Customer service calls are not free any more
Telecom consumer protection laws still in draft
Other emerging cosumer gripes

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By Aisha Sarwari

What are the odds that I move into a house in the elite F/11 sector of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad and our land lord turns out to be a wife-beater?

1 in 4, according to the United Nations report on gender 2007. Flip it around and the same applies to 25% of all women in this country are said to have faced violence from their male relative, be it a father, brother, uncle, husband or son.

Take this statistic to a new geographical location and nothing changes, the same 1 in 4 of all relatively empowered women of the developed world face domestic violence at some point in their life regardless of race or socio-economic standing. There are two profound differences though, a woman in the west is more mobile and flexible in terms of walking out of a relationship and even moving into a shelter with her kids, and she is more likely to get the abuser to incur some damage, be it financial, social or legal.

Owais Mughal

These days nothing shocks us anymore. Look at this cutting from today’s Jang. This guy is openly asking for a Ministerial post as a condition of contesting elections. I am sure these kinds of ‘joR toR’ have happened before but I’ve never seen such aspirations revealed so publicly. Enjoy.

Reference: Jang Faisalabad of May 7, 2008

Manzoor Ali Shah

The NWFP has always been in limelight, but for wrong reasons. From the British raj’s Afghan wars in eighteenth century to Russian invasion in 1979 and American ouster of Taliban from Kabul in 2002, NWFP had been pivotal to the imperialistic designs, as it provides road access to Afghanistan. Later, the emergence of local Taliban and militancy, itself a product of 30 years long Afghan war, put the Frontier on the map of world, as the bastion of terrorism.

The media stereotyping put the beautiful aspects of its culture, history and people on the backburner and nowadays world knows the people of the Frontier as mere suicide bombers and terrorists. However, there are many a remarkable traits and cultural aspects, which only the Frontier could claim and linguistic diversity of the province is one of such traits.

Owais Mughal

The Following photo is courtesy of Zahoor Ahmed. It is dated as April 17, 2008 and shows colors of spring in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley.

Some of you may also remember our earlier photo post, which showed Autumn Colors in Hunza Valley.

Adil Najam

Adil Najam

A number of our commenters have been suggesting that the honeymoon between PPP and PML(N) - or, more specifically, between Asif Ali Zardari and Mian Nawaz Sharif- will not last. That the “judges issue” will bring the demise of this coalition.