Customs to destroy all blacklisted phones in its possession

Customs, under the orders of FBR, will destroy all the phones that have been blacklisted by Pakistan Telecommunications Authority. The phones were originally seized to auction them off at a later date, however, due to them being blacklisted by PTA after December 1st, they are useless in Pakistan and thus cannot be auctioned.

According to the procedure mentioned by FBR, the list of IMEIs of all the confiscated phones will be forwarded to Director PTA, who will then evaluate the phones through DIRBS, identifying which phones are not permitted to work within Pakistan. Customs will then destroy all those blacklisted phones after fulfilling the regulatory requirements approved by FBR.

The directive to destroy all such phones was issued by FBR to Customs as General Order 7 of 2018. It includes all those devices which haven’t been whitelisted in Device Identification Registration Blocking System (DIRBS).

DIRBS became active after 1st December 2018 and all the phones not registered through the system have stopped working on all mobile networks in Pakistan.