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KARACHI, Nov 3: The City Council members questioned on Saturday the implementation of the Civil Registration Management System (CRMS) of the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra), saying that the system was not properly installed in many union councils of the city.
In August, Nadra and the city government signed an agreement to implement CRMS in all the 178 UCs of the city to bring uniformity in issuance of computerised birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates.
During Saturday’s meeting of the City Council presided over by its convener Nasreen Jalil, members from both the treasury and opposition benches expressed concern over the delay in the implementation of the CRMS and questioned the training given by Nadra to the secretaries of every UC to run the system.
A Nadra official, responsible for the implementation of the CRMS, also attended the city council meeting and tried to brief the house about the progress made so far and the impediments in the way of proper implementation of the system.
CRMS Manager Khalid Waleed briefed the council members saying that the Information Technology EDO had fixed Oct 22 as the cut-off date for the issuance of manual birth, death, marriage etc certificates. Now, all such certificates were being issued under the CRMS by the UCs, he added.
He said Nadra had trained secretaries of all UCs on the issuance of the certificates.
Reacting to his statement, a treasury member from North Karachi said the system was not installed in his union council.
Some other members also made this complaint and questioned the standard of training to the secretaries as according to them the UC secretary could not handle the software.The Nadra official maintained that he had documentary evidence that the system had been installed in each and every UC of the city. He said some UCs opened in daytime and some offices opened in the night. “Our staff had worked late in the night to install the system,” he said.
Both opposition and treasury members started asking a number of questions simultaneously, forcing the convener to intervene. Ms Jalil, who is also the city naib nazim, said Mr Waleed could not answer all the questions and she suggested that members submit written questions so that they could be given to Nadra officials for satisfactory replies.
Earlier, Javed Jadoon of Baldia Town said that some amenity plots in his area were being auctioned as commercial ones at throwaway rates. He demanded the immediate cancellation of such auctions to save the amenity land. He told the hous that the city government was responsible for the auction, when the convener asked him as to who was responsible for it.
A treasury member, Nasir Ajmeri, said some plots in Saddar Town had been leased by the government but some bathrooms built on government land were also among the leased plots. He also demanded the cancellation of the leases of the bathrooms on government land.
Another treasury member, Sarwat Arif, read out an order of the Supreme Court about unity of command in the city. She wanted to table a resolution on the issue but an opposition member, Anwar Baloch, said the matter was taken up by the apex court and there was no need for a resolution on that issue.
Opposition member Ramazan Awan asked the convener to summon the head of the UC development programme so that he could brief the house on his performance.
The convener adjourned the meeting for Nov 7.
