Karbala’s New Computer System to Prevent Corruption

“Tens of thousands of documents are burned every year,” Nafea Jiyad, a government employee, said. “Once the applicant has received the service, then the documents are no longer needed. So they become garbage and the departments get rid of them,” Jiyad explained to NIQASH.

To avoid this, and to try and make procedures easier and quicker for locals, the local authorities in Karbala have taken a new approach: they’ve been consulting with experts at the University of Karbala and at the University of Kufa in nearby Najaf, on how to improve things.

First on the list is computer technology which will eventually allow a database of every citizen’s details to be completed.

The system will also see every citizen get a distinctive number, explains Hussein al-Mankoushi, the mayor of Markaz, one of Karbala’s districts. The database will hold all of their details in one place, under that one number, which will mean they don’t need to carry so much paperwork around and which will also mean records are not just burned.

“The mayors of each neighbourhood will be responsible for updating deaths and births,” al-Mankoushi explained.

It is hoped that a new computerised system will also see fewer mistakes made by government employees. Sometimes bureaucrats write down the wrong information and then citizens must spend time and money trying to correct the mistake.

Of course, not everyone is as enthusiastic about the new plan. Some locals were opposed because, they said, a lot of the state employees were not computer literate.