The Minister of Communication and Information Technology was able to satisfy Iranian MP’s by attending the Islamic Parliament’s session and answering the inquiry of Urmia’s representative.
According to ICT’s Public Relations, in this
session, Dr. Vaezi, the Minister of ICT replied to the question of Ghazipoor,
representative of Urmia, who asked why there was no noteworthy government supervision
on communication quality and the activities of the Iran Telecommunication
Company and the ‘Hamrah Aval’ Co., by saying: “When a public company is handed
over to the private sector, any decision goes through its board of directors
and the government’s shares in telecommunication has no effect on the decisions
of that company, and all we can do is overall supervision.”
He asked for an amendment in the related
regulation so that the government can have more supervisory permits based on
general policies of the article 44 of the Constitution.”
The ICT Minister continued by emphasizing that
the current outlook of the government toward the communication sector is a
technical and developmental one, and added that: “When a public company is
privatized, practically any request or disagreement must be resolved through
negotiation and mutual agreement. But at the moment, anytime that we increase our
supervisory activities, we may be accused of having a one-sided and biased
outlook toward that company. Our outlook is neither political nor biased, but rather
technical and progressive.”
After the official reply of the Minister,
Nader Ghazipoor announced that he has not found the Minister’s replies satisfactory
and asked Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the Vice-Chairman of the Islamic Parliament of
Iran, to put the question to a general vote which eventually, from the total
197 MP’s present in the session, 101 voted for, 67 voted against, and 12
absented; Therefore the majority of the MP’s deemed the replies and
explanations of the ICT Minister as ‘satisfactory’.