close
Friday March 29, 2024

Servers up again, no data lost: BIEK

By our correspondents
August 16, 2016

The board had earlier expressed concerns that the raids conducted by
ACE teams could damage servers, says exam results to be announced soon

Karachi

Days after levelling allegations against the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) for disrupting the main data server of the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK), the board's exam controller, Muhammad Imran Khan Chisti, announced on Monday that the server was functioning once again and all data was safe and secure.

He assured that no data was lost thanks to the engineers from IT section and that the BIEK had resumed finalising the pending results. He stated that the result which was supposed to be announced on August 12 but got delayed owing to a raid by ACE would be revealed soon.

“The board will not compromise on results and declaration will be made only after personal stratification,” he said.

Claiming that BIEK was cooperating with ACE he said that the latter hadn’t forced the Board to get any advantage.

He also mentioned that the deputy controller, Muhammad Dabir, wasn’t in the premises when ACE raided the office and since then the Board has no information of his whereabouts. However BIEK has conducted departmental inquiry about him and the results pertaining to Pre-Medical group would be announced later this month.

Last week, ACE confiscated various items from the Board Office including 21,000 answer scripts, a few computers and some important files after complaints of biased checking were lodged.  

BIEK chairman Mohammad Akhtar Ghori had strongly disapproved of the raid and said that this action had led to confusion and with answer scripts taken away the credibility was also compromised. On August 11, Ghori and Chishti, at a press conference held at the board office, had alleged that the BIEK’s computer server was down due to ACE officials’ mishandling and chances were high that all data saved on it would collapse.

If the board’s three days had not been wasted, it would have announced results of pre-medical group on August 12, the officials claimed.

“Weapons were used to terrify BIEK employees, while a wife of one of the staffers was admitted to the hospital due to misbehaviour of some ACE staff. “They confiscated mobile phones of board office employees and did not allow several staffers to leave the premises,” Ghori stated. The chairman further said that if the ACE had any information regarding corruption at the BIEK, it should have ideally contacted him or controller examination directly.

Declaring ACE’s allegations of the board tempering results groundless, Ghori stated that it could not have tempered with the result since they were yet to be prepared. “The ACE had chosen an inappropriate time and disturbed the whole process of result preparation.

“If they had any information and did not want to share it with us, then they should have waited till the results were declared and could in the meanwhile have gathered evidence to support their claims.”

The answer sheets have been mixed up, the serve has been damaged; all our efforts to prepare results have been washed away by the ACE.”

If the board was really taking money to produce wrongful results then the pass percentages would have been calculated to be between 80 to 90 percent and not 50 to 55 percent, Chisthi added. The future of students is at risk but the ACE was not realising the gravity of the situation and not co-operating with the board despite the latter having extended full support to the investigation team.”

In response, ACE chief Ghulam Qadir Thebo while presiding over a meeting at his office on the same day had observed that no one was above the law and strict action would be initiation against officer reported to be involved in corruption.Although having vacated the BIEK premises, Thebo while being briefed over recent raids was told that 94 cases of corruption were, along with proper evidence, identified at the BIEK.