Numaan’s Diary

Pakistan is entering into a new era of prosperity. The country has internet access in almost all cities. There are computer labs in schools and colleges, every other day you would see some government officer inaugrating a new computer lab in some school or college. Musharraf’s government is proud that they have made so many TV channels available to Pakistanis. All medium to large size companies, institutions and organizations have some www address printed on their business cards, posters and advertisements.

But I feel that we as a nation are absolutely clueless about what information is and how important role it plays in the development of nations. We know that our organizations, businesses or institutes need a www.myorganization.com.pk website. But we have no idea how to use the world wide web. We have fruits in our hands but we don’t know that in order to enjoy their juices we need to bite them. In 2006 Pakistanis can not download your utility bills. Even after yeas of hard work to bring these small but significant changes to lives of Pakistanis, we failed.

Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC), is a Pakistani company with a www.kesc.com.pk domain name. KESC supplies electricity to more than 14 Million residents, businesses and industries in the Megapolis and surrounding areas. This giant corporation’s website has only three links on their main page. Rest of the page is an screenshot of a website and is displayed in Gif image format. I remember KESC had a functional website sometime ago and I have downloaded my electricity bill from their website. I remember they had detailed information available. Now every thing is gone.

The Website has a picture telling visitors that KESC has 92 customer services centers, but no addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses available. A picture titled “Latest News” tells you about Federal Minister Mr. Liaquat Jatoi’s visit to KESC headquarters on 29 September 2006, nothing more on that is available.

I don’t know how many Bills KESC issues each month, but this URL is printed on the back of each KESC bill. I don’t know how many people make an attempt to look at the KESC website each day or month. But I find it quite suprising that they are so careless about all this.

The website (a poster actually) doesn’t disclose any contact information so I was unable to contact people who are responsible for this job at KESC. It has a link at the bottom telling that the website designed and maintained by e-Creatorz. I filled out the contact form on the e-creatorz website on January 19 and asked them about the situation. They didn’t disclose or clarify anything, simple told me to wait till the website is relaunched hopefully in a few days. Now after a month, www.KESC.com.pk still displays the flyer that you can get created by the graphic designers at Burns Road for RS.100. I don’t blame e-Creatorz for getting more money than they deserved. I blame KESC for being so cruel, barbaric and ignorant.

KESC and all Pakistanis who can not understand the importance of information, the broken websites, useless and contentless macromedia flashy websites, and the 30 minutes per week per student computer labs. These are the signs that Pakistan is not entering into any new era of prosperity. We are actually going back in the reverse gear. Yes we are making progress and working hard but in the wrong and totally opposite direction than the one that leads to knowledge, power and freedom.

eMarkaz is an online store, a subsidiary of Urdu Point, An Urdu web portal that claims to be the largest Pakistan based Urdu website. They have a very good range of products available for your shopping pleasure. Specially if you are a non resident Pakistani, you would love their audio, video and books catalogues. I haven’t bought any thing from emarkaz and would love to hear from people about their expreinces with the Pakistani Amazon.

I can not understand, why every thing on sale at the emarkaz website is double the original market price. For example, Nokia 1112 mobile phone is on sale at emarkaz for Rs. 4900, while the same mobile phone is available for RS. 2700 in the market. (price taken from MobileZone’s website, actual market price could be even lower than that). eMarkaz claims free shipping so we can not say that they are charging 2200rs for shipping.

A Barbie Birthday doll costs Rs. 2950 on emarkaz. A few weeks ago I bought my neice the same Barbie doll for rs. 1200, from a local shopping mall. May be additional taxes and import duties are not included in these prices. If thats the case then why all made in Pakistan products such as books and CDs are nearly double the market price?

In the books section Ibn-e-Insha’s travelogue “chalte ho tu cheen ko chalyay” is available for RS. 495. I bought this book a few months ago for RS. 120 in hardcover and white paper. This book is also available from Sang-e-Meel publishers at the same price. The actual publisher’s price mentioned in the book is RS. 150.

Nearly five days ago I wrote them an email asking about the prices but they did not reply. If any one of you is going to buy any thing from eMarkaz, be very careful.