September 06, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 05, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 5: The Sindh government will spend Rs921.812 million on computerisation of the entire land revenue record in the province.

This was stated by Revenue Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in reply to a question asked by Mohammad Nawaz Chandio of the Pakistan People’s Party during question hour in the assembly on Friday.

The minister said the government had launched a pilot scheme for computerisation of land revenue record with the assistance of Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2003-2004. Undertaken in five districts – Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Khairpur, Sukkur and Larkana, the scheme had a limited scope as only revenue bills were generated under it, he said.

A comprehensive project to cover the entire province was launched in 2007-2008. The computerisation and establishment of the land administration and revenue management information system (Larmis) would cost Rs921.812 and creation of GIS for Land Administration and Revenue Management in Sindh would cost Rs648.86 million.

The project, expected to complete in four years, was aimed at enabling the board of revenue’s administration to exercise better control and operate with specific emphasis to ownership titles and land utilisation with elaborate database link and efficient GIS-based system capable of controlling entire revenue work in 23 districts, l21 Talukas and all sub-registrar offices and Sindh Board of Revenue having direct access to the main centre/ server.

Murad Ali Shah explained that a separate project monitoring unit (PMU) would be established to synchronise work of the entire project. He said that for physical execution of the project, formation of advisory committee, preparation of request for proposals (RFPs) and advertisement for hiring staff and establishment of PMU as per PC-I are in process.

In response to a supplementary question, Mr Shah said that Rs40 million were spent by the previous government on the pilot scheme of computerisation but the project remained restricted to just “boxes of computers”.

He said no inquiry was conducted into the previous work as the present government wanted to proceed with the comprehensive project which would be undertaken initially in two Dehs -- one from urban area and the other from rural area -- and then take up the entire project if it proved successful.

The minister, replying to supplementary questions, said the disputed cases would be shown as disputed once the record was fed into the digital system.

Secretariat fire

In reply to another question, he said it was a fact that a fire incident took place in eastern portion of Block-79 of Sindh Secretariat No 4-B on March 20, 2008. The office of district armed services board Karachi and the directorate of social welfare department and women development department, located on the first floor of eastern portion of Block-79 of Sindh Secretariat No 4-B, were completely burnt, he said.

The office of the superintendent stamps, record room of old evacuee property record and other rooms on the ground floor also caught fire due to which some record of survey superintendent was burnt. The record, he explained, included land registers, field books, ‘ghat wadh’ forms and old maps pertaining to some Dehs of Karachi besides some old files of evacuee property record, and inward-outward registers of land utilisation department of the past years.

He said for reconstruction of the survey record, Survey Superintendent Rafique Ahmed Qureshi had been appointed as enquiry/ authorised officer under Section 40 of the Land Revenue Act 1967 within a period of six months. Special Secretary Land Utilisation Haji Nazar Mohammad Leghari and other senior and experienced officers of the revenue department would render guidance and assistance to the authorised officer in the reconstruction of record, he added.

Mr Shah said the government had constituted an enquiry committee under the chairmanship of Additional Chief Secretary (Dev), Planning and Development Department, Nazar Hussain Mahar for probe into the fire incident.

He said the committee furnished its report to the chief minister through the chief secretary. The chief minister, he said, had reservation that no responsibility had been fixed in the report.

He said the officials had been told to give details of the record that could be reconstructed. He said security system was also being improved to prevent any untoward incident in future and all the steps would be expedited after the presidential election process.

He made it clear that every record did have a backup through micro-filming though the system would be improved further.

He said that transaction was stopped in areas where the relevant land revenue record was destroyed.

Appointments

In answer to another question, the minister said the board of revenue had made appointments during the previous government as per rules/ policy and 11 officials including junior clerks, drivers, naib qasids and sweepers were appointed in the board of revenue and its attached offices against son quota in respect of the deceased employees who expired during their service, with the approval of chief minister.

Twenty-two other officials were appointed on a contractual basis for a period of two years for the scheme “Automation” of stamps and registration department on a summery approved by the ex-chief minister.

Replying to a question of Syed Ghulam Shah Jilani, the minister said that scrutiny of all appointments made during the previous government had been conducted. In the revenue department no illegal appointments were made by the previous government, he said, adding that no such appointment had been terminated.—APP