Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, Federal Minister for IT and Telecom along with senior officials of the ministry would brief the president regarding the project to have his nod for the programme.
“The ministry has launched the project at a cost of Rs40 million to automate all bar associations, including offices of the higher judiciary, of the country.”
In the first phase of the project, he said, 31 bar associations, mostly district bars, from Punjab had been provided online access to statutory and case laws while the remaining bar associations in the province will be automated within the next few weeks.
“The project titled ‘Access to Statutory and Case Laws’ is an extension of an earlier programme whereby the ministry provided 82 bar associations of the country online access to statutory and case laws for a period of three years which ended in April this year,” said Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, Federal Minister of It and Telecom.
He said 31 bar associations of Punjab, 16 from Sindh, 21 from NWFP, three from Balochistan besides nine tax bar associations and three registry offices of the Lahore High Court were among the beneficiaries of the previous programme. The federal government in 2002 launched e-government programme with an aggressive campaign to put all the public service departments online but government’s plans almost failed to take off on the absence of comprehensive strategy and design.
The government last year attempted to expedite the project as the National E-government Council, constituted by the prime minister, fixed Rs1 billion to complete the project, decided to initiate the project and outsource those to local software houses. The programme was envisaged to adopt a paperless environment in all the ministries and departments to enhance their performance. “The e-justice programme would not only facilitate the judges and lawyers in remote areas to have ready access to all sorts of legal information, it would also lead to a great amount of job creation and efficiency in delivery of justice and related public services,” said Leghari.
He said the extension of the programme at a much wider scale now would improve considerably the quality of services at various levels besides helping young lawyers to enjoy access to vital information without buying expensive legal books and references.
“It should also help substantially reduce case time preparation which has been a major stumbling block in the quick processing of court cases,” he said.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Imran Ayub
Quelle/Source: The News - International, 10.12.2006
