PCOs take Agartala clients for ride

AGARTALA, February 20: There are serious allegations from the public that the PCO owners here are reluctant to allow their clients to avail of the new STD rates. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has reduced the call charge within a distance of 200 km and charging it at par with local call but the PCO owners here are reluctant to allow the callers to utilise the facility for their own interests. With the new system, even places like Shillong, Aizwal and Imphal have fallen within the 200 km radius as a result of which telephone user here need not pay for STD call to ring up someone in those capital towns of the NE region. The facility of local calls within a distance of 200 km was extended in the state on January 26, but till date owners of PCOs are either not aware of it or are interested to take full advantage of the people's ignorance about it. The BSNL revised the call charges for a distance in the slab of 0-50 kilometres at 180 seconds pulse, between 50-100 kms at 120 second pulse and between 100-200 km at 30 seconds pulse effective from January 26. This has resulted in the local PCO owners incurring losses. Moreover, they are forcing the public to utilise the STD system instead of the newly launched system of dialling through the 95-383-33455 number (if the STD code of the concerned place is 0383 and the phone number is 33455 under the new system, the caller will have to dial 95 instead of the first 0 and then continue with the following numbers.