PESHAWAR, March 14: Automated birth registration system at union council level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues to be far from being implemented to the locals’ disadvantage, it is learnt.

“Purchase of hundreds of computers for introducing the new system does not appear to be a fair deal,” a relevant official told Dawn on Wednesday.

According to a finance official, the department released over Rs70 million to the local government and rural development department last year but computers have yet not been installed in union councils.

The project to introduce automated birth registration system at union council level was conceived around three years ago and the authorities kept reflecting it in the government’s annual development programme for at least two years in a row.

In January last year, the local government department and National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) made an agreement under which the latter was to train secretaries of around 700 union councils on how to use birth registration software.

A tentative schedule for training union councils’ secretaries in 22 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, according to a Nadra official, had also been put in place and the authority had also tasked 113 software experts from its staff with training the secretaries.

“It is going to be on-job training programme which cannot happen unless they (the provincial department) install computers in union council offices,” said an Islamabad-based Nadra official. He said the training schedule was prepared for 22 districts other than Kohat, Haripur and Mansehra.

Birth registration system in those three districts, said the official, had already been computerised and connected with the Nadra database. “Secretaries in Kohat, Haripur and Mansehra had been given training and the system is running quite fine,” said the Nadra official.

He said the district coordination officers of the remaining districts had also been issued a letter by the provincial government last year, intimating them the tentative schedule of the secretaries training.

Meanwhile, the computers, said a provincial official, were likely to take some more months to be installed in union council offices as ‘the local government department is grappling with some contentious issues pertaining to delivery of computers with pirated software.’

When contacted, local government department’s information technology professional Bashir Khan expressed ignorance about project details and said the deputy director (development and monitoring) would be in a better position to answer queries.However, the deputy director was not in her office. Her staff said she had gone to attend an official meeting.

Additional secretary of the department Maqbool also expressed ignorance about project details.

“The local government department,” said the finance official, “had been provided the full amount in November last year and now it is their job to utilise the funds quickly for the purpose they acquired funds from the provincial government.”Local government department officials said a three-member committee had been constituted to examine computers, check system details in an effort to verify that the dealer had provided computers in accordance with the specifications mentioned in the official purchase order.

The committee includes the local government department’s information technology professional (Bashir Khan) and one representative each from the Local Council Board and the Information Technology Directorate.

Mr Khan said the committee had not yet met. He, however, said all computers would be examined.

Tender notice for purchasing some 700 computers had been issued more than once, according to officials. Last year, said an official, the procurement process was abandoned midway by some high-ups without citing any cogent reason.

An international computer firm, among all those who applied for the contract, had quoted the lowest prices. The company’s Peshawar-based representative, Nawaz Khan, did not talk about the matter when contacted over the telephone.

The situation has denied benefits of the project to people as they continue covering long distances to register names of their newborn babies first with local union council staff and then with Nadra.