KOHAT, June 14: Unknown miscreants damaged the main optic fibre cable near the KDA Township, disrupting the communication system on Monday night. Besides, mobile telephone services and internet facilities also remained suspended from Monday evening till 9.45am on Tuesday. However, nation-wide dialling was restored after about seven hours.

Ufone and cable telecommunication services to government offices were suspended till Tuesday afternoon.

SDO Mushtaq Orakzai, when contacted, said that the optic fibre cable between Kohat city and the KDA Township had been damaged by some unknown people at 6.30pm on Monday. However, the PTCL staff accompanied by military and civil administration officials located the fault at 10.30pm after which the repair work began.

Sources said that a team of optic fibre experts had been called from Peshawar but it could not arrive till 2am on Tuesday.

The company’s engineers were trying to run the system through alternate cable and overall system was expected to be hooked up to the nationwide network within next few hours.

A PTCL worker in the city exchange, while talking to this correspondent late Monday night, said “it is just a beginning”. He said the government would have to reverse its decision to privatise the company when the whole system would be jammed as announced by the union leaders earlier.

A senior union leader, Moharram Ali Shah, who was demoted from the post of SDO to that of supervisor sometime back, has gone underground to evade arrest by the law enforcing personnel.

The Janglekhel police station has registered a case against unknown miscreants and making efforts to arrest the culprits involved in damaging of the optic fibre cable.

It may be recalled that on Sunday night army and police were deployed at all the telephone exchanges and the microwave tower situated in the cantonment area. Army’s signal corps had taken over the installations exactly at 8pm after which no PTCL worker was allowed to enter the premises.