Treasury dept’s online system in disarray

Fed up with the problems,the Punjab treasury branch association has decided to go on a pen down strike on October 4 and 5 if the system is not improved by then.

Vinod Sharma,president of the Punjab association said: “Earlier National Informatics Centre (NIC) was running this system at the district level and each district had its own server. The reports used to go by the end of the month. We welcome the new step of networking of all the offices,but the system should work as well”.

Sharma claimed the new system was unable to cope with the load.

“There is a huge backlog of bills and receipts of all the government departments across the state. This system is already working in Gujarat and it has not provided much results even there. No proper trials were conducted before making the system online. The server is not able to take load of all the Punjab offices,” he said.

Confirming the problems being faced by employees,Rachpal Singh,district treasury officer,Ludhiana said: “The pendency in Ludhiana office alone is in the thousands and I have taken up the matter with the treasury branch’s deputy director a number of times. Meetings are being conducted with TCS but we have not found any improvement as of now. Even on Monday,the system was down for the whole day”.

Rahul Tiwari,Deputy Commissioner,Ludhiana,also confirmed the same and said: “Bills are being cleared after 4-5 days which earlier used to take only one day”. Sharma elaborated further,“Earlier the bill was cleared in five steps. Now 13 steps have to be followed. If the system had to be made online,NIC would have been told to expand the software further. Earlier the speed was good. In name of networking,now we are hardly getting any connection for most of the time”.