KARACHI: The Sindh government has informed the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta) in Islamabad that it will complete geotagging of around 10,000 madressahs in the province within two weeks, it emerged on Monday.

Geotagging is the process of adding an electronic tag (a symbol or set of letters) to a photograph, video or other information on the Internet to identify the place, enabling the authorities to make readily available the required data for any place they desire.

Officials said the authorities continued the survey of madressahs across the province, which, in the first phase, had already documented more than double to what were the previous figures.

However, they said at present more than 9,500 madressahs had been documented in Sindh, yet it was not the final list, as the authorities had not yet surveyed several remote parts.

“The number of madressahs will still be a couple of thousands more than the present number, which we are striving to document,” said a senior official in the home ministry.

Nacta had blamed the authorities in Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan for not completing the geotagging of madressahs. The federal authorities had complained that despite sending several reminders, the Sindh government gave no satisfactory reply.

In a fresh move, officials in the provincial home ministry declared that they had duly replied to the Nacta, seeking two more weeks to do the job.

Officials said the task had been given to the special branch of the police, which, with all equipment available were busy to complete it by the deadline set by Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah.

“The number of madressahs in Sindh is being reverified through the special branch and this task is expected to complete within a week,” said a senior official.

In the meantime, said the official, all the madressahs were being geotagged. “The whole exercise will be completed within 15 days,” he added.

Officials in Islamabad said geotagging of madressahs was among the key plans envisaged under the National Action Plan to curb all possible routes of terrorism. However, it is worth noting here that no action has been taken against any of the 49 madressahs which had been earlier identified to have links with ‘terrorist organisations’.

The officials said that Punjab had geotagged all madressahs two months ago after screening more than 13,000 seminaries in the province. Similarly, Balochistan, too, completed geotagging of madressahs, while Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa termed 150 madressahs ‘sensitive’ after mapping more than 3,000 seminaries in the province.

Officials in Sindh, however, claimed that the province had completely different challenges than the rest of the country that caused a delay in timely completion of the task. “Now we are confident that the work will be completed by the mid of September,” said a senior official.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2015

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