Faulty computer system boosting corruption at Karachi Development Authority ..........KARACHI (March 5) : Karachi Development Authority (KDA) has failed to correct faults in its computer system for the past two months which is delaying the processing of cases pertaining to three important departments of 'land', 'finance' and 'recoveries', thus given way to corruption. ..........Sources said that the KDA computer system developed a fault on January 1, 2000, with the roll-over of the century. The officials were of the view that KDA system was hit by the notorious Y2K bug. ..........However, it is a fact that the system, which was installed in March, 1988, started developing faults regularly from 1996 and a sum of around Rs 125,000 per month was being spent on maintenance of the system. ..........The authority, sensing the gravity of the situation, has so far called tenders on three occasions to replace the existing system but no party has been awarded the contract. ..........KDA's governing body formed a three member standing committee six months back to finalise the modalities with IBM which agreed to replace the system at a cost of Rs 10.53 million. But even after the entire system is at standstill for last two months no tangible progress was made by the standing committee on the subject, which has become a major reason for increased corruption in the department. ..........Sources said that computer faults have created problems for people as they were again facing the corrupt elements, which were delaying the official work. ..........On the other hand, the KDA staff of these three departments were happy with the situation and have been sending a note to bosses that they were handling all the work manually without causing problems to people.--PPI ..........Copyright 2000 PPI (Published under arrangement with Pakistan Press International)

-- cheryl (lookingup@go.com), March 05, 2000

Answers

I don't think you need computers to boost corruption in Pakistan :^)

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), March 06, 2000.