The Hindu 03.05.2017
Corpn. loses valuable documents
Perils of neglect:Officials said the shifting of documents was not properly supervised.Special Arrangement
Records relating to birth and death were shifted during renovation; some of the data could be lost
Invaluable documents relating to data on births and deaths in the
Chennai Corporation region were damaged after they were shifted to
another location in Ripon Buildings.
On Tuesday, labourers
hurriedly shifted the records that were stacked up in neat piles,
reducing them to a disorderly heaps of paper haphazardly placed one on
top of the other.
In the process, many files were damaged, papers were torn and records lost.
According to sources in the Chennai Corporation, the existing records were shifted to facilitate the renovation of the building.
“Some
officials decided to shift the records to another building, but the new
location was not suited for the preservation of the documents. Also,
the labourers shifted the documents without proper supervision,” said an
official of the Corporation.
While a portion of the birth and
death records are housed in zonal offices of the civic body, most of the
records have been preserved in Ripon Buildings.
Previous damage
As
much as 5% of the 2,600 books in the birth and death department were
already damaged earlier, affecting the scanning of the documents for
digitisation, the work for which started in 2015.
The digitisation
work is almost complete and the checking of the quality of the scanned
documents is under way. If the scanned copies are found blurred, the
officials will have to repeat the process.
If the data in the
documents damaged on Tuesday has not been properly recorded during the
scanning, it could be lost forever, officials said.
Officials of
the Corporation said the checking of the quality of the digitisation of
birth and death records will be completed in one month. At least 20 lakh
pages have been scanned.
“Even after digitisation, we will
preserve the books in the birth and death department. Physical records
are always the most reliable,” said an official.