MARDAN: The computerisation of land record in Mardan district has been completed and land record centres in each of the three tehsils here will start service delivery from mid July.

“The computerisation of land record in Mardan district has been completed. The new system was ready to be formally launched from July 1, 2014 but the ongoing protest strike by revenue officials (patwaris) has delayed it,” said additional district collector Fakhruz Zaman while talking to Dawn here on Friday. He added that they would now start the facility by middle of July.

Mr Zaman claimed that the ‘patwari culture’ would be eliminated as the role of revenue officials had been reduced to zero in the new system. He said that the computerisation of land record would also protect landowners from land mafia and illegal land disputes.

He said that the computerised land record service delivery centre in Mardan district would be a model centre where CCTV cameras and waiting rooms equipped with facilities for both men and women would be available. He said that it would be a modern land computerisation centre. He said that CCTV camera record of all those people visiting the computerisation centre would be saved for two months and watched if required within the said period.

Mr Zaman said that there would also be a district monitoring unit (DMU) to oversee the computerisation process of the land record. “We have completed computerised registration of land data of all the total 176 mauzas of the district in record six months,” he claimed, adding that they had scanned all the data and saved it to the computers.

He said that they had set up one service delivery centre each in Mardan, Takhtbhai and Katlang tehsils of the district. He said that people would be able to get copies of ‘fard’ or other information related to mutations from these service centres.

Answering a question, he said that prior to mutation the revenue officials would take photograph and thumb impression of the persons concerned.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2014