By The South Asia Times 

TANK, JAN 01: It is a real feather in the district administration’s cap to be standing first among southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with completing computerization of land record despite limited resources and grave challenges mainly flooding and maintaining lasting-peace.

Tank district was included in second phase of the land records’ digitization process with 11 other districts including Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, Battagram, Nowshera, Charsadda, Hangu, Karak, Haripur, Swabi and Lakki Marwat by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in 2015.

Among these districts, Tank administration took the lead by completing the process successfully first while at provincial level it remains at fourth position if districts of phase-I  are also taken into account.

“The credit goes to all my team members who tirelessly worked day in and day out and put up efforts in a coordinated manner, winning laurels for the administration by accomplishing the uphill task to digitize 87 Muza in district against all odds,” Deputy Commissioner Hameedullah Khattak told media.

Initially, the digitization process started in 2016 continued at a snail pace in the district with a piecemeal approach, but the incumbent administration sensitized all the stakeholders about the utility of the drive and got things streamlined.

But as the district administration was gearing up to complete the task on war footing, a new challenge resurrected its ugly ahead and that was ravaging flood which left a trail of destruction across length and breadth of the district with infrastructure damaged, crops destroying and claimed human lives.

On the top of that, when inhabitants and the district administration  is no exception, recollecting the grisly incidents riddled past become so obsessed with having sustainable peace in the area and that remains a challenge too.

The district administration was really overstretched while coping with these challenges but stunningly it managed to get over by the virtue of strong determination and high spirit to serve people and the area under all circumstances.

Normalcy was restored as result of citizens’ cooperation and coordinated efforts of all the line departments under the leadership of the district administration. 

Hameedullah Khattak said after successfully tackling the flood situation, the land computerization process was kick-started from September 30, 2022 while giving lots of pep talks to stakeholders and pursuing reward and punishment policy  to mobilize the revenue officials amid stringent monitoring mechanisms.

Resultantly, the process was completed in a short span of time leaving other adjoining or southern districts of the province far behind.

He said two Service Deliver Centers(SDCs) had been constructed and now the facility of fard, mutation etc would be available under one roof and people would be able to promptly get correct information and  services about their land record in the district.

In order to boost performance of revenue officials the district administration honored six revenue officials(Patwaris) with cash awards and commendation certificates on their good performance during computerization of land record process in the district.

Meanwhile, people have lauded the district administration for accomplishing the much needed task, saying the incumbent officials have won hearts and minds of the residents.

They are of the opinion that properties have been bone of contention among people and such land disputes inflicted heavy costs on residents of the area. They have expressed the hope that the initiative would help provide them relief by completely eliminating measurement errors, illegal encroachments, and other malpractices in the land record system.