Telecom Secy directs DoT officials to expedite projects

In view of various projects missing deadlines, Telecom Secretary MF Farooqui has directed DoT officials to cut down on delays and clear cases that have been pending for six months.
"It was observed that wings where the pendency is quiet high should chalk out a plan to clear the pendency. It was decided that by the next meeting, all cases pending for more than six months should be disposed of," said the minutes of a meeting chaired by Farooqui early this month.
The Department of Telecom has faced several delays in processes in case of mergers and acquisition guidelines, installation of mobile towers in Left Wing Extremist affected states and so on.

The Telecom Secretary has asked the officials concerned to simplify and streamline process related to licences, applications and other related matters.
"All divisions of DoT may review the levels of submission so as to restrict them to minimum level prescribed in manual of office procedure... This exercise may be completed by end April," the minutes said.
Farooqui has asked officials to re-engineer processes which have public interface to expeditiously complete work.

"This exercise needs to be taken up in all divisions of DoT but initially by all wings having public interface such as licensing, wireless finance etc. Online applications and processing, online payments etc. May be introduced," the minutes said.

Farooqui has asked officials to prepare communication plan for schemes that have direct impact on public.
"Details of media plan segment-wise ie TV, Print, Internet and mobile should also be chalked out separately," the minutes said.
DoT also decided to review present status of non-linking DoT website with social media platform like Facebook, Twitter and others within the limit of guidelines issued by government on use of social media.