GUJRAT: Services remained suspended on all the computerised land record centres (CLRCs) in two districts of central Punjab, namely Mandi Bahauddin and Narowal, on Monday due to an error in the recently introduced software in at least 76 CLRCs in the province during the last few months.

The people at the CLRCs of these two districts suffered a lot due to the suspension of services.

Previously, the Land Records Management and Information System (LRMIS) was not web-based in all the 144 CLRCs; however, it has now become a web-based system in 76 CLRCs while the system is being upgraded in rest of the centres.

According to the official sources, 25,000 mutations are lying pending in these 76 CLRCs as officials have not been entering the mutations due to the technical error to avoid any wrong entry without payment of the government dues. The system error has also caused a problem in receiving the dues at the bank counter in the CLRCs.

New system develops error in all 76 districts; 25,000 mutations are pending

The Punjab Land Records Authority (PLRA) decided early this year to replace the old system with a centralised software after backlash and negative feedback of the users. The LRMIS has now become the Centralised Land Records Management Information System (CLRMIS).

“The CLRMIS is an internet-based service, like every modern bank in Pakistan and it needs internet connection to run properly which requires minimum internet speed of approximately 4MB to 6MB per second,” said a software engineer of the Systems International, the firm which has prepared centralised software.

The services remained suspended due to a very poor internet speed and other technical faults that erupted in the system of the CLRCs of Mandi Bahauddin and Narowal districts, said an official working at one of these centres and added that technical workers of the Systems International had consistently been working in respective centres to correct the fault.

Another official source said the fee collection software of the Bank of Punjab (BoP), linked with CLRMIS on the counters at CLRCs, was also not upgraded according to new updates of the CLRMIS which had resulted in serious technical failure whereas the printers and scanners were not responding to this new software as general public had to face a great inconvenience the whole day.

Moreover, a litigant told Dawn that the services also remained closed on Friday and Saturday for the installation of the new software at the CLRCs of Mandi Bahauddin district and they were asked by the officials to arrive on Monday for the needful but to no avail as now he was told that the system had developed some technical error which was being rectified.

Other people also complained about long queues and wait since they were not informed about the fault.

On the other hand, the BoP representatives deputed at the CLRCs too were unaware of new software’s working and they were unable to collect the fee due to the technical flaws but the system would forward the mutation to the official concerned without payment of the government dues that’s why the sources said the insertion of new mutations had been withheld as pending cases.

However, a senior official working at one of the CLRCs of Mandi Bahauddin district said the efforts were being made to resume the services on Tuesday for which the technical staff was working on it. The technical staff said that the system had been installed at 76 CLRCs so far and it had caused same problems at all these centres and the faults had been later on rectified.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2017