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| March 12, 2003 | Wednesday | Muharram 8, 1424 |
PTCL billing facility at post offices soon
ISLAMABAD, March 11: The government intends to provide billing facility for the Pakistan Telecommunications Company (PTCL) customers at post offices across the country.
This was stated by the minister for information technology, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, while speaking at the official launching of the National Bank of Pakistan’s (NBP) 18 ATMs (auto teller machines) here on Thursday.
The facility has been set up jointly by the Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) of the Ministry of Information Technology and the NBP.
The minister said the billing project was being launched to facilitate the PTCL subscribers in areas having no banking facility.
He said the large network of post offices spread across the country would go a long way in redressing the complaints of the people. This step was just a beginning of a process during which the concept of e-government would be introduced in every department of the government to facilitate the public, Mr Leghari added.
He said the installation of 18 ATMs at various locations in Islamabad and Rawalpindi were also part of the government’s efforts to bring information technology to the people at their doorsteps.
He was confident that the facility would also be used for the payment of salaries to the federal government employees as the locations were appropriately selected near government offices and residential localities with concentration of low and middle- income employees.
He also announced that the government employees would be given ATM cards without any charge and called for extending the facility to other people free of charge as well.
The minister stressed the country’s future lay in the growth and promotion of information technology and e-government.
He said governments around the world were responding to the information-age-society and Pakistan was no exception. “The key forces of change such as globalization, the rise of knowledge economies and new technology are transforming the relationship between government, business and society,” he added.
He also called for bringing about attitudinal changes in the government-sector organizations to relate in a better way to the citizens and customers. “We must reach out to the public and provide services to them at their doorsteps,” he said.
The minister recalled that before the recent advancement of information and communication technologies, the government departments provided services to citizen through the media of paper and printed words. “The difference in ‘government’ and ‘e- government’ lies in the media of providing services to citizens. Unlike classical model of government, the electronic government provides services by using information and communication technologies.”
He said the introduction of technology in the government sector had increased the speed of service delivery while digitized data base in government offices had helped in improving efficiency in providing services. Another benefit of these technologies was a greater transparency in government operations, he added.
Mr Leghari said while extension of technology to every government sector was a wonderful idea promising a lot to the customers and subscribers, the conversion of paper-based government into electronic government was indeed a very difficult as well as a prolonged process.
Citing a UN report for 2001 which put the development of e- government “still in its infancy”, he said: “No government in the world has been completely converted into electronic mode of operations.
“It is, therefore, essential that every government prepares a roadmap to move smoothly on the road to an ideal e-government,” he said, adding Pakistan had also prepared a similar road-map called the Electronic Government Programme (EGP) which had teamed up with the NBP to provide ATM services to the government employees in the capital.
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