The project had come under fire three months ago when the V-SAT machinery continued to lie unattended for over a month at the door-step of the district collectorate owing to the delay in the completion of the building specially built for this purpose. Global Wireless Technology Ltd - the company which is closely associated with the project has also come in for criticism for its slow pace of work. Sources revealed that the divisional commissioner was pretty cut up by the slow pace of work. The officials are learnt to have now decided to penalise the company for its failure to complete the project within the stipulated time frame.

V-SAT was envisaged by the State Government's District Disaster Management Action Plan (DDMAP), in the the devastating Killari earthquake to link all important government departments for effective communication. These include the divisional commissionerate, district collectorates, police commissionerate control room, district police superintendent control room, earthquake and rehabilitation department at Mantralaya, revenue and forest department, Chief Secretary's office, irrigation control, sub-divisional offices and all municipal corporations.

V-SAT facilitates communication with the help of satellite. The two ends here are not directly connected through direct telephone lines but are instead hooked upto the communications satellite through V-SAT. The instrument comes in handy in slow speed operations and is useful in the transfer of data.

The Pune district collectorate will now be directly linked to Mantralaya in Mumbai. Officials from Meltron who are closely associated with this project were in Pune on Wednesday to oversee the trials and testing before the final commissioning in the next few days.

In the first phase of implementation, 11 sites will be hooked onto the satellite. These include Mumbai hub, Pune hub, Nagpur commissionerate, Amravati Commissionerate, Konkan Commissionerate, Nashik Commissionerate, Aurangabad Commissionerate, Latur collectorate, Pune collectorate, Gadchiroli collectorate and Sindhudurg collectorate.

For Pune division, the equipment installation, antenna erection and link with the hub has been completed in Pune, Satara, Solapur, Sangli and Kolhapur.

The next phase will involve connecting nine collectorate offices and the Pune Commissionerate which is expected to be implemented by September 20, 1999. These offices include Aurangabad collectorate, Parbhani collectorate, Nandurbar collectorate, and Jalgaon collectorate.