Govt losing revenue on BTTB's callousness

The government is losing a huge amount of revenue due to carelessness of Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) in filing cases for realisation of telephone bills pending for years.
The proceedings of over 400 such cases have been stayed by court without realisation of pending bills as the BTTB authorities failed to provide the court with correct addresses of the defaulter subscribers.
In the last two months the courts disposed of only eight cases and realised a total of Tk 1,80,102 from the defendants. Over 3,747 cases are now pending with only two Dhaka courts for trial.
Court sources said the government is losing around Tk 3 crore as such a large number of cases remains stayed or pending, mainly due to the neglect of BTTB accounts officials in providing necessary information.
After scrutinising the case statements, Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Al-Mamun had earlier directed the authorities concerned to file fresh cases providing required information of the telephone bill defaulters, such as their names, fathers' names and correct addresses.
The BTTB, however, failed to submit any lists of correct names despite repeated directions by the court. They also did not implement any attachment orders.
According to a case statement, the BTTB had filed a case with the CMM's Court against three subscribers on November 26, 1990 for realising Tk 83,956.65 in phone bills from July 1984 to April 1989.
The court had fixed 57 dates for the last 18 years, but there was no development in realising the bills from the clients, as the BTTB had filed the case using only the business addresses of the subscribers.
It is not that the BTTB does not have the permanent and present addresses of its subscribers, since one has to fill out the subscription form with all these information while taking a telephone connection.
The BTTB had filed a number of cases against several former lawmakers for the last two years for realising pending telephone bills and in those cases, they had mentioned the subscribers' full names and addresses, court sources said.