ISLAMABAD, Dec 31 (APP): Minister for Information Technology and Telecom Syed Amin Ul Haque on Thursday virtually inaugurated the Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) Lahore for National Data Centre of National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC).
The new site is full-fledged Data Centre which will not only work as backup to existing Data Centre, but also provide enhanced capacity for provision of cloud based services to the government with advanced features and security.
The inauguration ceremony was attended by Secretary IT, Telecom Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, CEO Huawei Mark Meng, MD EBG Huawei GAO Weijie and others.
Syed Amin Ul Haque congratulated NTC management for completion of an important project of DRC to strengthen the security and availability of government data.
The minister also appreciated MD NTC for his leadership and management for the phenomenal development of ICT infrastructure in the Public Sector without any government funding.
Earlier, briefing the minister, MD NTC Brig (R) Viqar Rashid Khan said that this was a historic occasion for NTC to have achieved the milestone of establishing DRC in Lahore. “This day is also important as NTC has completed its 25 years’ journey,” he said.
The MD said the site of Disaster Recovery was an integral part of NDC. In 2016, NTC established a Cloud Based Tier-III complaint ISO 27001 certified National Data Centre at Islamabad. In a record period of of 5 months, since then, NDC has helped the government to implement e-governance, e-health and e-education plan in a transparent manner besides ensuring storage of government data at a secure centralized place.
It is important to mention that NTC has shown record growth in Exchanges at 225 per cent, record expansion to new districts/cities at 50 per cent, record ADP completion in FY-2016-17 and 2019-20 at100 per cent, subscribers growth at 16 per cent with broadband subscribers growth at 115 per cent.
The MD said during COVID-19, NTC National Data Centre acted as the main platform for hosting all the system/web/mobile applications developed for data acquisition and data analysis, which assisted National Command and Operation Centre and other policy/decision makers.
He said, “Even during COVID-19, when every department was demanding special funds to fight against the pandemic, the NTC earned profit of Rs578 million in fiscal year 2019-20”.
The MD said the NTC has managed to complete 100 per cent Annual Development Plan during fiscal year 2019-20 which was a record in the public sector.
Later, taking to media persons, the minister said the federal government has announced Rs1.1 trillion development prorgamme for Karachi. The people of Karachi would earn Rs3.3 trillion to the government, he added. He said it was basically responsibility of the provincial government, however, she failed to do so.
He said K-4 project has already taken over by WAPDA and it would be completed in three years.
Similarly, the minister said the Green Line Project was also being funded by the Federal Government and would be completed by June 30, 2021.
