LHC commission grills Lahore DCO, IT consultant

The judicial enquiry commission headed by Justice Shahid Saeed of the Lahore High Court (LHC) sought education certificates and degrees of IT consultant Dr Majid Naeem on Saturday, doubting his educational credentials to prepare a computerised online system for the education boards of Punjab, which badly failed to compile intermediate results.
As the proceedings began, Lahore District Coordination Officer (DCO) Ahad Cheema appeared before the enquiry commission and tried to defend Dr Naeem, but could not as the judge was almost convinced that Dr Naeem and the DCO were both somehow responsible for the failure of the online system.
The system was introduced during Cheema’s tenure as Punjab higher education secretary and it was he who had hired Dr Naeem as the IT consultant for the online system. The DCO and Dr Naeem are close friends and both are said to be the apple of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s eye.
The commission’s proceedings have also spurred National Accountability Bureau (NAB) authorities into action, who arrested Dr Naeem on Saturday evening in a pending NAB case, perhaps to avoid questions about why he had not been arrested.
Justice Shahid cross-examined the DCO, asking him why he assigned the IT task to Dr Naeem despite the fact that he had been removed from the Punjab University, University of Engineering and Technology and the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) for poor performance. The judge also asked the DCO if he was unaware that a corruption case was pending against Dr Naeem with NAB, which made him “unfit for the sensitive job on which depended the future of the students of Punjab”.
“You began the online system in haste and later become Lahore DCO and then did not even look back to see whether the system was in a workable condition or had failed to deliver,” the judge told Cheema. Defending his position, Cheema said the online system had no faults and the problems lay only in its implementation, which was the responsibility of the chairmen of the boards, not Dr Naeem. But, the DCO said, the chairmen and the clerks of the boards bungled the implementation. He said ill-intent on the part of the boards’ chairmen was the cause of the students’ suffering.
The DCO said Dr Naeem was the right person for the job, being qualified in IT and software development, and his online system had no defects as alleged by the boards and others. Dr Naeem, who was also present, claimed his system had no faults and if anybody was responsible for errors in results, it was the boards’ staff.
The DCO claimed he had assigned the task to Dr Naeem to coin the online system with good intentions in order to modernise the system. The judge remarked that it was clear that Dr Naeem has political links and it was that which put him in the position, but he failed to deliver.
The judge ordered the DCO to submit a written statement before the commission on November 14, pointing out all those responsible for the IT failure and in defence of Dr Naeem because he was the one who chose Dr Naeem for the project.
The commission also held that Akram Kashmiri, the suspended chairman of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Lahore also seemed to be responsible in the failure of the boards and the online system that cost students heavily.
The chairmen of the eight boards and other officials present before the commission alleged in once voice that only Dr Naeem and his online system had caused the problem. The commission asked the BISE Lahore chairman whether he ever pointed out the fault in writing to anybody, to which the chairman could not reply and the commission told him to give his statement in writing to the commission as well. The proceedings will resume on November 14.
Meanwhile, Acting BISE Lahore Chairman Allah Baksh Gondal told the commission that the intermediate results had been compiled afresh and results would be declared by November 19.
He said a total of 180,000 students had taken in the intermediate examinations and there were errors in the results of 80,000 students, and the board was working to correct the mistakes. The commission told the chairmen of the rest of the boards to submit their reports on the matter by November 14.