Free communication: Judges, court officials to have dedicated cell numbers

LAHORE: Judges and select staff of the provincial judiciary will have dedicated mobile numbers for free communication, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Lahore High Court has engaged Warid Telecom to issue dedicated mobile numbers to judges and officers from 0321-1020001 onward. These numbers will have concessional post-paid user packages for judges of Lahore High Court, judges of the subordinate judiciary, LHC officers above grade 17 and select staff of the district judiciary, it is learnt.

In this regard, the LHC registrar has issued a circular to high court officers and all district and sessions judges of the province, inviting them to avail this facility. According to the circular, the package includes 20 to 25 percent discount in line rent with free calls to family and LHC numbers. The circular said the LHC would organise allocation of numbers and issuance of SIM cards. It said that users would deposit the security amount and pay their monthly bills without LHC’s intervention. It asked the judges and other officials to respond to the circular at the earliest if they wanted to avail of this facility.

The package details attached with the circular show that the monthly line rent of four packages is Rs100, Rs250, Rs500 and Rs750, respectively. The holders of these dedicated numbers can contact each other free of cost through SMS or call. They can send 500 free SMSes each to any network every month. They will have 100 to 400 free outgoing minutes for on-net and off-net numbers. If they want to avail free SMS facility to any network, they can get it by paying Rs500 per month.

They will avail weekend on-net rates of Rs0.45 per minute for calls and Rs0.65 per minute throughout the week on Warid numbers.

They will get Rs0.75 per minute call rates from Warid to other mobile networks and PTCL landline numbers.

LHC spokesperson Arif Javed Dar told The Express Tribune that officers using these numbers would not be allowed to switch their phones off because this facility was meant to ensure uninterrupted communication among them. He said it was not mandatory for the judges or the court staff to have these numbers. He said that SIM cards had been issued to some people and more applications were coming in.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2016.