Ten thousand telephone Unes are to be disconnected in the 15 districts of the Chittagong division for nonpayment of bills. Two thousand connections have already been snapped In the port-city Itself. We have nothing but welcome for such right yet much belated action. The outstanding bills amounting to Taka 20 crore Is paltry In national terms but is a gigantic pull towards collapse when correctly treated as one single organisation’s problem. Telephones, to thrive and improve. must be able to pay their way and even contribute to the state coffers. A failure to do so would only result in erratic and unreliable service costing the nation so much in economic terms.

To make the operation a success, care should be taken to see that all defaulters are equally treated. Evidently most of telephone subscribers are tops in the society — the influence of some of them knowing no bound. And then a big part of the defaulters are the government's own establishments and offices of private organisations having more power than government agencies, specially in regions far from Dhaka. Any slackening of the operation in any one case of such would render the operation ineffective.

There Is another side, perhaps a more serious are a that relates to ensuring that not one obliging subscriber is unduly harassed, even as a matter of mistake. This part of the operation would prove the strongest for the simple reason that the telephone department — Its commercial and purchasing sections in particular, is not at all Immune to corruption and inefficiency.

The matter of billing and collecting has long been a mine of corruption for all government organisations. This all-pervasive disease will need sustained and hyperpotent medication to heal. Fear and favour should be the two words that must _go out of the dictionary of those charged with fighting the disease. And we don’t as yet know if some people have indeed been charged to treat this malaise, the anti-corruption people can be counted out for they are not on record to have done anything against culprits connected with government in power — any government — or belonging to It.