KATHMANDU, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's telecommunications regulator has blocked more than 200,000 websites and mobile applications involved in online betting and illegal financial transactions during the FIFA World Cup, the Prime Minister's Secretariat said on Friday.
The move is in line with the government's 100-point Governance Reform Action Plan, issued on March 26, which includes measures to curb online betting and online scams.
"Following the March 26 announcement, all betting websites operating in Nepal at the time were shut down," the Prime Minister's Secretariat said in a statement. "Despite these actions, new betting websites have continued to emerge under different names. Since the start of this year's FIFA World Cup, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has blocked 223,568 such apps and websites."
According to the statement, the Prime Minister's Office took a particular interest in the issue, anticipating that the use of betting apps could increase during the World Cup.
In response, the NTA intensified its enforcement efforts and formed a dedicated task force to combat online betting and illegal financial activities.
The statement quoted Om Prakash Mahato, an assistant director and engineer at the NTA who serves on the task force, as saying that representatives of Internet service providers (ISPs) were stationed at the NTA's office throughout the World Cup to facilitate the immediate blocking of such websites.
In coordination with ISPs, the NTA blocks the URLs through which these websites operate, Mahato said.
"Since manually identifying such a large number of websites is difficult, the authority relies on lists compiled by authorized agencies and organizations to identify betting sites and websites involved in illegal financial transactions before blocking them in collaboration with ISPs," he said. ■
