ISLAMABAD Hafeezur Rehman, the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), declared on Thursday that the ban on X, formerly known as Twitter, would be lifted at the request of the government.
Rehman spoke during a Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat meeting in Islamabad that was presided over by Rana Mahmoodul Hasan.
Because of worries about national security, the social media platform has been unavailable in Pakistan since February 17. Nevertheless, a virtual private network (VPN) can be used to access it.
Following the prohibition, the Sindh High Court (SHC) received numerous petitions challenging the nation’s sporadic internet service outages and limitations on microblogging sites.
In its response to the last month, the federal authorities maintained the prohibition on X.claiming that in terms of resolving national security concerns, the action was “legitimate”.
Senator Abdul Qadir raised the issue during today’s Senate body meeting, inquiring as to the telecom regulator’s intentions to lift the website restriction.
“We will [remove the ban on X] on the day that the government asks us,” Rehman stated.
The MPs were told by the chairman that X has the lowest compliance rates of all the platforms and that only 7% of the complaints that were sent to the platform in the last three months have been resolved.
