At Charity commissioner’s office, computers lie unused

Pune, February 20 Twentysix brand new computers, along with their servers, lie unpacked in their boxes, in a small room on the ground floor of the Joint Charity Commissioner’s office building on Dhole-Patil Road, while three Charity Commissioners continue to grapple with bulky paperwork on the floors above. Paucity of staff to operate the machines is reportedly the reason for not using the computers, as a request for typists to the Charity Commissioner Headquarters in Mumbai is awaiting a response, according to senior officials at the office. Ironically, the head office had conceded to a request for computers and approved the sanction of 28 computers to the Pune office (reportedly 18 months ago) and only two of them are being currently used by the Assistant and Deputy Commissioner.

The two-storeyed office houses two trial courts and one appellate court which deals with registration of trusts, changes in reports, formulation of schemes and complaints involving trusts. While the trial courts are currently handling over 7000 cases, complaints submitted on a daily basis are steadily adding to the number. The computers had been allotted to the offices with an aim at computerising the records, thus making data documentation and typing of orders easy, said one of the officials.

Computers are not the only machines lying unused in the office. While its predecessor, a dusty typewriter, lies stranded in one of the courtrooms, again owing to the lack of a qualified typist to operate it; a technology glitch has prevented the use of laptops given to the three Commissioners by the Bombay High Court. “The laptops are installed with Linux software, which is incompatible with the desktops and the printer. This makes transfer of data impossible, as data fed into one cant be deciphered by the other,” said the official.

When contacted, Joint Commissioner G D Tadwalkar said he would be unable to comment as the issue was under deliberation with the Headquarters and was likely to be resolved soon.