ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi Monday asked the State Bank of Pakistan to formulate a stringent policy to educate people against the scam callers who deprived many of their savings.

On Twitter, the president shared The New York Time’s article on the growing number of scam callers in US causing huge economic loss to the people, and said that in Pakistan too, the Ombudsman secretariat got thousands of complaints against such scams draining poor people of their savings.

According to the article “Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?, the total losses reported to FBI by victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017.

According to a survey, around 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.

“Am shocked by numbers in a society that is used to internet banking,” the president remarked.

“We get 1000s of complaints in the Mohtasib secretariat already of such scams draining poor people of their savings. Have requested (State Bank of Pakistan) to make a stringent policy to educate people,” he added.

Quoting a scam victim, the writer called Indian city Kolkata as a “capital of such frauds” though he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities.