NEW DELHI DECEMBER 16: With few days now remaining for the millennium bug to strike, the Government today sought to allay all fears relating to it by stating that all critical sectors have achieved full Y2K compliance and are geared to ensure smooth transition into the new millennium. Further, if any hiccups arise, to take care of it a national control room has been been set up in Delhi which will coordinate with similar control rooms in all the states as well as sectoral control centres.Addressing a press conference, chairman of the high-level action force, Montek Singh Ahluwalia said that the latest status of preparedness including contingency planning and setting up of national control room (NCR) was reviewed in a meeting of the action force today morning. He said that all eleven critical sectors - banking and finance, insurance, power, telecom, railways, civil aviation, ports, petroleum and natural gas, atomic energy, space and defence - are Y2k compliant. Ahluwalia said that to lessen the workload on banks, salaries to all central Government employees would be paid on December 24 itself. Further, anybody if so wishes can get hard copies of bank accounts on demand from banks.Information Technology Secretary P V Jayakrishnan said that sectors like power, banking, civil aviation, railways, telecom, in particular achieved compliance and conducted external audits. Further, they were continuing the process of checking and re-checking. Jayakrishnan said that most of the flights will be on schedule with some flights rescheduled.Ahluwalia said that with regard to the health sector, all major hospitals dealing in sensitive sectors have achieved compliance. However, all the smaller hospitals were not fully ready. Ahluwalia added that there was no mechanism even to get a feedback from each one of them.A Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) representative in the action force, Lalit Sawhney said that in the private sector also all large corporates had become Y2K compliant. Further, to assist the private sector further, CII will also establish a control centre which will be effective from December 31, which will coordinate with the NCR.Ahluwalia said that the NCR which has been set up in Delhi is based in the headquarters of National Informatics Centre (NIC). It will become operational from 10 am on December 28 and would be in place till 8 pm on January 3, 2000. It will function round the clock. It will be connected to all the control rooms of the 11 critical sectors in addition to similar NCRs in each state and district headquarters. NCR will also be in touch with the control centres of the rest of the world.As New Zealand and Australia are the first countries to experience the transition into the new millennium, the information received from them would be shared with everyone immediately on receipt.
