Hazards of communication

Mobile phone is a personal machine, which is carried anytime all the time. A personal gadget, it could be considered a blessing but it is a sure-fire recipe for social trouble as it has turned into a nuisance for many, most of the time.
"Anonymous wrong calls have made my life hell, a person call me with different numbers and if I accidentally pick his call, he starts saying 'I want to make friendship with you, so talk to me' when I drop his call, he harasses me by sending romantic or abusive text messages" 21-year-old 'Z' working in the social sector was telling me with wet eyes.
'Z' is not the only girl who is facing this problem; a silent majority is suffering from this dilemma. 'R' is another victim of cyber harassment. With great annoyance, she picked up his call and warned him not to call and to stop sending unwanted text. She was told that as the person wants to talk to her she should talk to him. When she tried to convince him that if some person would call your sister and tease and harass her like the way you are doing? She got the reply that, "No, my sister is very pious, I do not let her have a mobile so no one can talk to her."
This thought-provoking argument made her speechless and she simply changed her number. But the thought arose that girls with mobile phones are pious? She works in a city where suicide bombings, sensitive law and order situation, strikes and rallies are the normal routine.
To keep in touch with her family, she has to have a mobile along. But keeping a mobile set is not an open invitation for unwanted calls. Practices and consequences of this salacious problem are cropping up across the country.
Since the boom of the communication industry, cheap communication (cheap in both terms, morally and monetary), night packages, bundle SMS have given birth to numerous similar situations involving minors or elders, literate or illiterate, spoiled rich or poor in extracting pleasure by making random phone calls and sending unwanted SMS. The harms that ultimately may arise from seemingly innocent acts of exuberance and teen spirit cannot be reversed, most of the time they stretch beyond exploitation and embarrassment to the victim. As 'R' was harassed, the unwanted phone caller used abusive words for her. She was depressed and afraid even to go to school. Now she is isolated and living with psychological problems."
To keep the country free from pornography, criticism of the government, wrong religious thoughts and terrorism and providing security to its masses, countries establish agencies to regulate. Pakistan was an exception for despite laws, implementation of these laws is missing. But the recent suggestion by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority forces telecoms operators to implement a system which will ban SMS messages with banned words in it.
According to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the official reason for the implementation of this SMS censorship is the Pakistan regulation called the "Protection from Spam, Unsolicited, Fraudulent and Obnoxious Communication Regulations, 2009". All operators must submit a monthly report to the PTA with the number of the blocked text messages. The filtering will be executed through automated machine process without reading or disclosing content of intelligence by a human being.
I appreciate the ban on obscene SMS in Pakistan, this is indeed a good step. This is not big deal, as by just a few clicks of the mouse it would serve Pakistan to get rid of a big problem. These things are really hurting Pakistan's young generation, especially the women.
It should be complemented with penalisation of unwanted callers. There are many who consider this act of the government a trick to monitor the masses. Some are of the view that it is an open violation of human rights. Whereas I think the government's intentions whether they want to block anti-government SMSs or have any other intention should not be a bone of contention. It can be an opportunity to get rid of wrong calls and immoral text messages. This will be appreciated if the government firmly instructs all communication service providers to prohibit such material permanently.