LAHORE: Despite the tall claims of Punjab Land Record Authority (PLRA) to improve the land record service delivery in Punjab and spending thousands of millions, the authority has failed to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS), Pakistan Today learned reliably on Thursday.
Pakistan Today also learnt that in order to digitise the land records, the government of Punjab had started a software-based project titled ‘Land Record Management and Information System’ (LRMIS) in 2007 and the purpose of the project was to focus on the land records system of the Board of Revenue (BOR) by putting in place a reliable, efficient, and transparent system for maintaining those records and providing access to those records for the population.
It was also aimed in the project to secure the rights of landowners whereas the rights were in two categories one was a record of land and the second was physical identification and marking of land. Unfortunately, in the second part, GIS is still missing from LRMIS and despite revised PC1 and increasing cost and hiring more resources GIS component is still not integrated and made a part of LRMIS.
Well established sources told this scribe that till completion, the project was revised 5 times. The first revised PC-I was approved at a total cost of Rs6329.718 million out of which World Bank’s share was Rs5363.718 million and the government of Punjab agreed to finance Rs966.515 million. The second revision was accorded at a total cost of Rs11201.15 million due to change in prices of hardware, civil works and salaries of data entry operators and the World Bank agreed to share Rs10257.96 million while government contributed Rs943.199 million.
The third revised PC-I was approved at a total cost of Rs12,260.380 million and the World Bank’s share in the cost was Rs11, 366.189 million whereas GoP financed Rs894.291 million. The basis of this revision was the unavailability of land record and shortage of funds which lead toward delays in the project’s implementation.
Further, the fourth and then fifth revision of LRMIS was approved at the same cost as of 3rd revised cost of the PC-I which was Rs12,260.380 million. The basis of these revisions was the re-appropriation of funds for IT equipment, ROD staff, GIS and creation of some posts for ROD and to use the available funds efficiently and effectively.
It is pertinent to mention here that the World Bank funding was limited to the components I, components II, components III, components IV as mentioned in the PC-I, however, the total expenditure of Rs11,457.077 million had been incurred and for the period of 2007-18 total Rs12,040.330 million was released and the project utilised 95.15 per cent of the releases.
The DGME also expressed its observation on the same project in a report which states, “GIS component is still not integrated and is yet to be made part of LRMIS despite five times revision of PC-1 with enhanced cost as well as time”.
When contacted, PLRA Director Communication Nadia Ahmed denied all reports and affirmed that it was not the part of their mandate, “Development of GIS was never the part of our mandate but yes we will think in future to prepare a concept paper or proposal and present it before government for approval so that the government can generate funds for the project and we could do it,” she maintained.
