For state staff, CCC means 145;Crying Computer Crisis146;

For the government employees, it is necessary to obtain the CCC certificates if they want promotions and higher pay scales.

The last date for submitting this certificate to the state government by their employees is December 31, 2008. But since the last three months, no examination has taken place, which is now a source of worry for government employees. There are 164 ITIs in the state, and examinations used to take place at 55 such centres every Wednesday till July 2.

There are around 5 lakh government employees in Gujarat as of now. Of this, around 3.5 lakh government employees are eligible to appear for the CCC examination.

Till now, around 95,000 government employees have appeared for the CCC examinations. In order to appear for the CCC examination, a government employee has to pay a fee of Rs 150.

A senior official of the Gujarat Council for Vocational Training GCVT, said: 8220;Earlier, we used to take a written CCC examination and now we will take an online examination. The demonstration of the software and hardware required for taking this examination is going on and we do not think there is any delay from our side.8221;

C V Som, Director, Employment 038; Training, Gujarat, refused to comment on the issue.

Satish Patel, Principal, ITI, Anwa, Dangs district, said: 8220; A lot of government employees used to come to our ITI everyday and fill up the forms for giving the CCC examination, but now they do not fill up the forms as they know that thousands of applications are still pending.8221;

He added: 8220;The demonstration of software and hardware required for the online CCC examination has already been done at our ITI and we are just awaiting instructions from the Employment 038; Training headquarters at Gandhinagar to start the examinations.8221;

An official from the Directorate of Employment 038; Training said on condition of anonymity: 8220;It is very strange to see that in the middle of the year,the senior authorities of the Directorate of Employment 038; Training decided to change the way the CCC examinations are conducted. They do not even have proper expert to deal with the software and the hardware.8221;

J P Chotai from ITI, Bhuj said: 8220;There is no doubt that it will not be possible to take examinations of the state government employees who are yet to appear for the same. I think the state government has no other choice rather than to extend the date of submitting the CCC certificates. Moreover, this incident shows complete lack of planning on the government side.8221;