Dagha tasks revenue board with launching e-services in a month

Sindh’s caretaker revenue minister on Tuesday tasked the Board of Revenue’s (BoR) officials to launch e-services within a month. Muhammad Younus Dagha said that with their launch, human interactions would be minimised, thus eliminating corruption, malpractices and inefficiencies in the land records and revenue system.

During a meeting that he chaired at the Revenue House, he directed the BoR to ensure better service delivery to people. Voicing concerns over the poor performance of the Mukhtiarkar and sub-registrar offices, he said visitors are forced to go through long ordeals.

He pointed out that the visitors are also forced to pay bribes for getting their documents registered and for obtaining mutation entries, sales certificates or other services.

He emphasised on modernising the services to get rid of the inherent flaws of the system, and ordered launching e-services, mobile apps and web applications within a month. The officials briefed him about the various IT projects undertaken by the BoR. He directed the authorities concerned to take advantage of digital technology and initiate facilitation projects to improve the revenue department’s public service delivery.

The meeting decided that the work, pending since a decade, of authenticating the digitised records of VF VII-A, VF VII-B, VF II, VF I and Ghatwadh forms up to the years 2012 would be authenticated by the relevant Mukhtiarkars and assistant commissioners simultaneously on hard copies and through an online process.

The meeting also decided that the BoR would notify the auditor to ascertain that proper authentication has been carried out, while deputy commissioners would ensure that the records are authenticated by the Mukhtiarkars of their respective districts in the stipulated time of 30 days.

The VF I and Ghatwadh forms would be authenticated by the survey superintendents concerned in the same manner, while the director survey and settlement would ensure that the authentication of records is done within the stipulated time.

Moreover, the BoR would issue a detailed standard operating procedure in this regard, and the exercise would be completed within a period of a month or two. The e-registration and e-mutations system in Sindh in collaboration with the Punjab Information Technology Board would be rolled out in one pilot district within three months, which would be replicated throughout the province within a month after the pilot run.

A facilitation project would be launched to automate and digitise the services at the Mukhtiarkar offices, including the issuance of sales certificates, heirship certificates, solvency certificates, passbooks, mutation entries in record of rights and city survey records within 30 days.

The remaining part of the digitisation of the microfilmed records of the registries, which are 2.6 million in number, would be completed in two months.

The remaining Deh maps would be digitised within 30 days. A biometric system has been installed at 60 sub-registrar offices, and it would be installed at the remaining ones within a month.

The dashboard for the registration and deed tracking system would be provided to the offices of the revenue minister, the senior member BoR (SMBR), the member RS&EP and the IG registration for monitoring the progress of the registration wing.

The sub-registrars would ensure computerised token issuance, and a timeline of three days would have to be complied with. In case of failure, strict action would be ensured.

The remaining activities of the preservation project would be completed within the stipulated timelines. All the above activities and decisions would be implemented with the spirit of teamwork by all the wings of the BoR.

The SMBR would assign different BoR field officers to visit field offices, especially Karachi, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Thatta and other divisional headquarters, to improve efficiency and service delivery. The SMBR would also conduct district level reviews to evaluate the performance of the respective commissionerates.