Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s digital services remained disrupted for an 18th day on September 30, affecting online property-tax payments, birth and death certificates, internal e-files and some employee salary processing, according to municipal officials cited by Anandabazar. The civic body has not given a firm date for the full restoration of its online systems.
A senior official in the corporation’s information technology department said the server was functioning only partially. Property-tax collection and the issue of birth and death certificates continued to face interruptions, increasing the difficulties for residents seeking services from the corporation.
The disruption has also affected municipal administration. A civic official said work on e-files had become difficult because of the server failure. Although the server was reportedly switched on again on the afternoon of September 30, officials were not immediately able to resume normal operations.
An officer in the property-tax department said the department would not begin work immediately after the server came back online. The officer said officials would wait for a day to assess whether the system was stable before starting operations. This leaves online property-tax payments uncertain for residents who depend on the digital facility rather than visiting civic offices.
Residents seeking birth and death records have faced a separate interruption involving the corporation’s chatbot-based system. A couple from Naktala told the newspaper that people seeking older records were required to send a message to a designated chatbot number linked to the municipal health department, but that number had been inactive for some time. They said officials at the corporation could not tell them when the service would resume.
According to the municipal information technology department, access to old and new birth and death certificate records had restarted through the chatbot about a month ago, but was later suspended again. A health department official said the booking process was stopped because of the volume of applications. The server failure over the past two weeks created another obstacle to the delivery of these records.
The disruption has also raised concerns within the civic administration about salary payments. Temporary health workers attached to Wards 12 and 16 protested at their respective borough offices after not receiving their salaries for the current month. A health department official attributed the delay to the server problem.
The timing has added pressure because municipal offices are due to remain closed for the Durga Puja period from the second week of next month until Lakshmi Puja. Any delay in restoring the systems could therefore affect residents who need time-bound certificates or wish to clear property-tax payments before the holiday period.
A senior official in the corporation’s information technology department assured that the server problem would be resolved quickly and said municipal employees would not face difficulties receiving their salaries. However, the corporation has not publicly specified the technical cause of the failure or announced a confirmed timeline for restoring all online services.
