KARACHI: Although the provincial authorities are still away from completing a multi-billion-rupee project to computerise millions of land documents of Sindh as a significant number of them is in a disturbingly deteriorating condition, they are on the verge of completing their task to link the revenue records with the geographic information systems a first for any province in the country, it emerged on Tuesday.

The project called land administration and revenue management information system (LARMIS) was launched in 2009 in pursuance of an order of the Supreme Court issued on a human rights petition and upon a directive of the then president Asif Ali Zardari to protect and make the records of the Board of Revenue viable.

The records ofthe board ofrevenue had deteriorated to a great extent allowing unscrupulous elements in the department and influential individuals to manoeuvre them at will.

The amount of Rs4,305.76 million was approved for the LARMIS project.

Besides, Rs648.86 million was granted for the creation of the GIS for land administration and revenue management in Sindh.

A further Rs363.709 million was allocated for the preservation of records in the directorate of survey, settlement and land record by scanning, microfilming, cataloguing and digitisation of the maps.

An official report said that a software programme required for scanning and indexing of revenue records of the province had already been developed while the software for data entry of the scanned land records had also been developed and deployed to nine data entry laboratories.

A third party software auditor is also on board for testing the validity of the software.

Officials said all major forms of land revenue record of Karachi and 26 other districts of Sindh had been scanned while the record of 119 of the 121 talukas had been indexed and provided to data entry firms.

`The scanned land revenue record is being entered into central database by nine data entry firms simultaneously,` said the report.

It said data entry of the record of 121 talukas and the civil work for establishment of the data centre was under way as the work for the establishment of data centre and disaster recovery centre had been awarded.

It said the construction of facilitation centres in Karachi and other 26 districts for service delivery of the computerised facility was being made on modern method for which work had been awarded. M/s NESPAK was selected as supervision consultant for the construction of those centres.

It said physical activity at 22 district sites had started while the construction at the remaining five district sites was to start shortly after design review and validation.Explaining the objectives behind developing GIS of the records, it said by using the GIS technology a mapping system was being designed to cater for general land information and help determine the land use, ownership and land transfer and purchase.

The project included developing GISbased Deh level maps for land administration and providing assistance in land revenue and other tax assessment and their collection.

The GIS system project was to be completed by June 2013 but, like the rest of the project, it needed some time to fully complete, officials said.

They, however, said a GIS lab equipped with technical HR resources, hardware and software was fully functional at the Board of Revenue.

Besides, the GIS consultant had developed digitised district-level cadastral map of the province.

It is learnt that the digitisation and georeferencing of all 5,979 Dehs of Sindh has been completed. Some 2,933 Dehs have been digitised up to the survey number level while the work on the rest is under way.

Additionally, the integration of data of GIS with LARMIS to facilitate public in satellite view of property record of Sindh had also been launched, said the officials.

Officials said the GIS system would also help differentiate the government and state land and property to protect them from illegal encroachments and fix the limits of the city as defined in the Sindh City Survey Act 1989 and the City Survey rules 1988 and City Survey Manual.

The GIS imagery for Karachi division was procured to incorporate the digitised survey data to ensure identincation of encroached land up to the survey number level.

They said in accordance with the order of the then president the land records computerisation was being completed in consultation with the National Database Registration Authority.

The objective of the scheme is to preserve land revenue record, which is over 100 years old pertaining to dehs, talukas and districts available at the directorate of survey and settlement. It comprises of 8,260,333 pages and 17,772 maps, which are to be digitised.

It was felt that the existing maps as prepared by the revenue department and its survey and settlement section lacked the required precision and flexibility from accessibility point of view, restricting its usage for determining the status of land in a given area.

Sindh has a total of 14 million hectares of land, of which hardly 5.71 million hectares are being cultivated.

The officials have proposed revamping of survey the settlement directorate, which would introduce new technology for carrying out surveys on modern methods making it compatible with the GIS-based environment.