Pakistan has always been a high maintenance country for me…..from a business perspective, that is. Apart from the fact that its experiencing a relatively unstable political situation at this junction, my IT team there requires slightly more hand holding and guidance. Theres no honeymoon here, and you need to keep your nose right in the thick of things, or they will just be swept under the carpet.
Due to an acquisition, my company has two offices in Karachi. We have been working towards co-locating both offices to a large central office which can accommodate both offices. We’re at the tail end of the project, and the staff is slated to start work in the new office next Monday.
Then, as you turn your eyes from the other issues in the region and start asking questions to your Pakistani team on the status of things, you suddenly realise that many things have not yet been done! The electricity for instance. I just realised last night that the building doesn’t provide any electricity from 8:30pm to 8am. !!!!! What the….???!!??? How come nobody mentioned this before? Surely this must have been in the clause when they signed the tenant agreement? Now they have to scramble and get an electric meter fixed so that the building can charge us for electricity used in the night.
Then, there is the issue of imported furniture. They’re still stuck in Karachi port (read: red tape at customs), and I’ll be totally surprised if they get delivered by the weekend. Not to mention that the size of the server room was too small, and I just realised it last week when I looked at the drawings. In order to get it back into the right size, they had to demolish the wall, and rebuild a new wall by moving it 3 feet backwards.
Then, the one that takes the cake! The Internet link! We’re moving in by Monday, and up till now, the link is not up. This one, I’ve been following for the last 4 weeks. Everytime they come back to me with an update, its a different story. One week its “we’ll get it done. No problems.” another week, its “I’ve spoken to the ISP. No problems”. Yet another week, its “The building management wants a financial deposit for the laying of the cables into the building.”. Then, last week it was “we’ve managed to negotiate the price of the deposit down, but still taking a little bit of time.”. Last week it was…”the building management has already got 2 ISPs in the building. They don’t want to allow our ISP in.” Yesterday, I found out that they’ve cleared the issue of the deposit and the issue of the third ISP. But now, the ISP needs to dig up some roads and lay the fiber connection!!!!!! WAH LAU!!!!!!
This time I spoke directly with the General Manager of our Pakistan office, and he assured me that the ISPs are working overtime and overnight to dig up the roads and to lay the fiber all the way up to our office, and that it will be ready by Tuesday evening. We’ll be able to test tomorrow morning.
I’m resigned…….Only in Pakistan…..Only in Pakistan.
Very nice feeling indeed.
