ISPAK: IMPORTANT NEWS

[Saad Saleem]

Dear all,   Over last few months, ISPAK has been made hostage of a particular group of people with their own vested interests. A lot of arbitrary decisions have been made during this period with the sole objective to benefit or suit the needs of a single or few ISP's. Collective and participatory decisions to benefit the ISP industry as a whole have been denied and rejected by the particular group who have been trying to hijack ISPAK. Some pertinent examples are as follows:   1. The Executive Committee member and Office bearers of ISPAK were never elected. These all positions were self created by a bunch of people with vested interests.    2. In December last year, the then so called President of ISPAK, Mr. Sanaullah Bhutta, has presented a proposal to MOST to offer cheap bandwidth solution to PTCL on behalf of "ISPAK Consortium". This proposal was prepared by a single ISP without consulting even the EC that time.   3. Many newspaper advertisements with vested interests were issued and no record of funds collections from various ISP's were ever made public.   4. Decision of the EC to hold elections by June 15, 2001 was not implemented.   5. Voter registration fee of Rs. 10,000 was imposed for the ISP's taking part in the elections   this move was tailored / manipulated to exclude genuine ISPs fromelections. 6. A three member committee headed by Mr. Bhutta, without any mandate from ISP's, agreed to a Royalty formulae with MOST @ 1.5%. On resistance from majority of ISP's, Mr. Bhutta informed that this Royalty would be 1.5% of gross revenue minus PTCL charges. PTA has categorically denied this and no notifications was issued by MOST/PTA to this effect. ISP industry is still harassed and threatened by PTA on this critical Royalty issue.   7. The Registration Committee formed by the EC decided to get the ISPAK registered with DTO. Without consulting or even informing the EC, Mr. Bhutta got the "ISPAK Karachi" registered with the Government of Sindh, thus promoting ethnic sectarianism and provincialism. ISPAK, as name stands for, was supposed to be a national body and not a regional or provincial body.   8. Majority of licensed and operational ISP's were barred from participating in the so called elections by embarking Rs. 10,000 voter registration fee. As a result, only 16 ISP's participated in the so called elections and this number by no means can be considered as representative of the whole ISP industry in Pakistan which consists of more than 70 ISP's.   9. No accounts of ISPAK were ever presented to EC or Annual General Meeting. There was no audit of ISPAK accounts. There has been serious complaints of misuse and misappropriation of this account. Mr. Bhutta's apartment in Karachi was rented to ISPAK to be used as office. No financial statements of accounts were ever made public.   10. The MOA (Memorandum of Articles) of ISPAK was changed and modified without the consent of EC members. Mr. Bhutta forged the signatures of two ISP's, namely POL and Nexlinx, on the fake documents and got the ISPAK Karachi registered with the Government of Sindh.   11. After the so called puppet elections, there was a serious quarrel between the President and General Secretary. Due to which the newly elected President was forced to resign as Mr. Bhutta and his allies used power politics tactics.   12. Mr. Bhutta's nomination in the ISPAK from Centuryt 21 (ISP) was withdrawn, which means that he couldn't be a member of ISPAK any more. "   We have tried very hard to drive sense into the current and ex-office bearers of ISPAK so we could work as a team for the ISP industry and not personal interests but could not succeed and were left with no option then to form a new body registered at Islamabad on all Pakistan basis to protect the interest of ALL ISP's. We already have support of some 30 ISP's whom we consulted before taking this decision and have a working office in Islamabad. We should also highlight that these ISP's are from all over Pakistan and not one region like in current ISPAK and they include national level ISP's like Paknet and Comsats as well as small members from cities like Okara etc. This email is to inform all ISP's of the new ISPAK. We would be holding elections before January 31, 2002 and all ISP's interested in joining can fill in the membership form available at www.ispak.com.pk and send the form via mail or courier  at the following address .    Ispak , 4 Mezzanine Floor , G-D Arcade 73 East Fazle-Haq Road Blue Area Islamabad There are no membership fees currently and once the new office bearers are elected then they will decide on these issues after getting opinion of all members.                 Regards                   Saad Saleem                   On behalf of Internet Service Provider Association of Pakistan                Islamabad.