RAWALPINDI, July 16: The judicial and revenue record of the entire district is housed in a 147-year-old building and maintained manually, in this computer age, by an insufficient number of staff, creating a host of problems for the timely retrieval and delivery of documents and storage of new record, Dawn has learnt.

The district courts began functioning in Rawalpindi in 1860, with a hall built and dedicated for the safe-keeping of the record. At the time, only two courts were functioning and the imperial rulers had built the hall keeping in view the capacity of those courts.

Today, after 147 years, there are about 35 courts with eight towns in the Pindi district yet the storage space for court records has not expanded.

All kinds of records are dumped in the hall. Records also come from courts in other towns, said a staff member, desiring anonymity. He said various kinds of records, such as revenue, criminal cases, civil suits and family matters were being dumped here, further burdening the already overstuffed building.

Though the building itself is in a stable condition but the record-keeping is in bad shape, with no bags (British-made canvas bags used to protect the paper from decaying) available and the valuable documents are being preserved on wooden shelves that may be in good shape but are hardly enough.

While the record material keeps on piling, the space continues to shrink. Heaps of papers can be seen lying on the ground and in every nook and corner of the old hall.

Not only are the piles of paper growing, the small number of staff —even less than sanctioned— are also overworked as demand for the record is quite high.

As far back as 1860, it was decided that 15 people were needed for the record-keeping, when the workload was much lower. But, in contrast, presently only six persons are working to maintain and deliver the record. The current number of workers have not been increased for the last 15 years.

A staffer confided that nobody wanted to stay there, due to the work pressure and health hazards associated with the job. The decaying papers and the age-old structure contain a unique kind of dust that causes itching and is injurious to hearing and eyesight, said the official.

With a high demand for the record, the staff are always busy producing the documents in courts where they remain stuck for hours, making others, seeking copies of the same records, wait for long hours.

Judges frequently direct the record room staff to destroy certain documents after their appeal date lapses but even that is not being done, again, owing to the shortage of staff. Even the piles of record ready to be destroyed are growing larger day by day.

Judges, or the administrative head of the record room, the executive district officer revenue (EDO-R), rarely visit the facility and whenever they do, it is only on orders of either the high court or the Supreme Court. Furthermore, no finances have been allocated for development of this key record-keeping facility.

Another problem with the record room in Pindi is the insufficient arrangement for fire-fighting. Such an arrangement is even more importance as the room is full of valuable documents in paper form. In January 2002, a building, adjacent to the main one containing revenue records, caught fire and the years-old record was burnt to ashes.

When the EDO-R, Jamal Mustafa Syed, was contacted, he acceded that the record-keeping facility was overloaded but denied that the shortage of staff was creating any hurdles. He said it had been decided to set aside funds for the betterment of the hall, in the Punjab budget for 2007-08, but he was not certain when the funds would be made available.

Talking about the computerisation of record-keeping, he said there has not been much progress since an initial discussion on the issue but, he added, he had been taking it up with the high-ups on every possible occasion.