GUJRAT: The Punjab government has dropped the plan of posting patwaris for computerised land record services at 206 revenue estates in 18 qanoongo areas in nine divisions of the province. Their scheduled training programme has also been shelved by the Punjab Land Record Authority.

The deputy commissioners of selected districts have been given fresh directions by the Board of Revenue to replace the patwaris with revenue department’s computer literate clerical staff for the training to handle the computerised land record services.

Official sources said that Chief Minister Usman Buzdar had expressed his dismay over the plan of posting patwaris at the revenue estate level and asked the BoR senior member to adopt alternate human resource for the purpose.

The patwaris had joined training at the arazi record centers (ARCs) of their respective tehsils since Monday last however PLRA’s Information Technology Director Osama Bin Saeed informed the service center heads to stop the training of staff sent by the DC offices due to some technical reasons.

Computer literate revenue clerical staff will be posted after training

Computer user identities and accounts created for the trainees had also been suspended for the time being and will not be available till further orders.

A senior official of the land revenue department told Dawn that the BoR had now sought lists of clerical staff of the DC offices for the training of staff. He said additional deputy commissioners (revenue) had accordingly dispatched the lists to the BoR.

Another source said that the directions had already been issued for the posting of revenue staff at the revenue estate level which might have created an ambiguity and the deputy commissioners who were also the district collectors heading the land revenue department had sent the lists comprising computer literate patwaris for the training and subsequent posting at the revenue estate level whereas the clerical staff of the DC office also considered as the revenue staff.

That was why, he said, some of the DCs had sent separate lists comprising patwaris as well as the clerical staff of the revenue department and now the DCs had been asked to send the lists comprising only the clerical staff of their offices for e training and further posting at the revenue estate level.

Earlier, Punjab Revenue Minister Malik Anwar had stated that the computer literate patwaris would be posted at the revenue estate level for land record services as a pilot project in the selected qanoongo areas and the patwar schools would also be launched at the divisional level.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2020