ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Syed Amin Ul Haque on Thursday virtually inaugurated the Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) Lahore for the National Data Center (NDC) of National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC).
The new site is a full-fledged Data Center which will not only work as a backup to the existing Data Center but will also provide enhanced capacity for the provision of cloud-based services to the government of Pakistan with advanced features and security.
The Inauguration Ceremony was attended by the Secretary IT & Telecom Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui, the Managing Director NTC Brig (retd) Viqar Rashid Khan, the CEO Huawei Mark Meng, the Managing Director EBG Huawei GAO Weijie, and others.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister for IT & Telecom congratulated the NTC Management for the completion of an important project of DRC to strengthen the security and availability of government data.
The minister appreciated the MD NTC for his leadership and management for the phenomenal development of ICT infrastructure in the Public Sector without any government funding.
“The Ministry of IT & Telecom doing its best to achieve PM vision for Digital Pakistan, NTC and all attached Organizations of MoITT performance speaking itself”, he said.
Syed Amin ul Haque advised the MD NTC to start the project for Karachi and Quetta Data Center.
It’s remarkable as I briefed by the MD NTC that During the COVID-19 pandemic, NTC National Data Centre acted as the main platform for hosting all the systems/Web/Mobile applications developed for data acquisition and data analysis, which assisted NCOC and other policy/decision-makers.
“Even when every department was demanding special funds to fight against the pandemic, the NTC in the times of Corona crisis has earned a profit of Rs 578 million in the financial year 2019-20,” he maintained.
Syed Amin Ul Haque said that that this government entity has also managed to complete a 100 percent Annual Development Plan (ADP) during the financial year 2019-20, which is a record in the Public Sector.
The NTC is probably one of the few Federal level Organizations that have recovered from a loss-making entity to a profitable and efficient forward-looking organization.
Earlier in his opening speech, the Managing Director NTC Brig (retd) Viqar Rashid Khan said that this is a historic occasion for NTC to have achieved the milestone of establishing DRC in Lahore. This day is also important as the NTC has completed its 25 years’ journey.
It is important to mention that the NTC has shown record growth in Exchanges @ 225%, Record Expansion to New Districts/ Cities @ 50%, Record ADP completion in FY 2016-17 & 2019-20 @ 100%, Subscribers Growth @ 16% with Broadband Subscribers Growth @ 115%.
