NAROWAL, Jan 23: An amount of three million rupees spent on a health survey, jointly conducted by the district government and the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD), went down the drain as the collected data has reportedly been washed due to some ‘computer error’.

The base-line health survey was conducted to gather information about the people’s health and the diseases common in the district.

Some 2,000 health and education departments’ employees collected the data from all households in the district. New computers were purchased and operators were recruited to enter the data through a special processing software for its useful utilization.

Then district coordination officer Sheikh Muhammad Asif and NCHD’s local unit head Dr Muhammad Ali were the project directors, whereas Dr Shafqat Ejaz was the project manager.

Sources said that according to the project plan, the data was to be entered in computers in five months period, but it could not be compiled even after a laps of more than one year.

In the meantime, Shiekh Asif got transferred to Lahore, while Dr Shafqat Ejaz was promoted and posted at the NCHD head office.

The NCHD’s local unit chairman, Muhammad Ali, refused to comment on the situation.

Former district health officer Dr Javed Iqbal said that complete data could not be entered in the computers and the information which had been stored got wasted due to some error in the software.

The district programme officer, health, NCHD’s Narowal unit, Dr Muhammad Naveed said the commission had no record of the survey. He said that he did not know anything about the data collected.

The health department employees who had worked for data collection said they had not been paid any allowances for their services.

Concerned circles have demanded of higher authorities that they should take a serious notice of the situation, and order stern action against the officers responsible for the wastage of public funds.