Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Syed Amin ul Haque on Thursday virtually inaugurated the Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) Lahore for National Data Center (NDC) of National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC). The new site is a full-fledged data center which will not only work as backup to existing Data Center but will also provide enhanced capacity for provision of cloud based services to the Government of Pakistan with advanced features and security. The inauguration ceremony was attended by Secretary IT & Telecom Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui, Managing Director NTC Brig (R) Viqar Rashid Khan, CEO Huawei Mark Meng , MD EBG Huawei GAO Weijie and others. Speaking on the occasion, Syed Amin Ul Haque, Federal Minister for IT & Telecom congratulated NTC Management for completion of an important project of DRC to strengthen the security and availability of Government data. The Minister appreciated MD NTC for his leadership and management for the phenomenal development of ICT infrastructure in the Public Sector without any government funding. “Ministry of IT & telecom doing its best to achieve PM vision for Digital Pakistan, NTC and all attached Organizations of MoITT performance speaking itself”, said Minister IT Syed Amin Ul Haque. Syed Amin ul Haque advised MD NTC to start project for Karachi and Quetta Data center. It’s remarkable as I briefed by 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. Minister IT stated. “Even during the COVID-19 Pandemic, when every department was demanding special funds to fight against Pandemic. The NTC in the times of Corona crisis has earned profit of Rs578million in financial year 2019-20,” he maintained. Syed Amin Ul Haque said that that this government entity has also managed to complete 100 percent Annual Development Plan (ADP) during the financial year 2019-20, which is a record in the public sector. NTC is probably one of the few Federal level Organizations who have recovered from a loss making entity to a profitable and an efficient forward looking organization. Earlier, Managing Director NTC Brig (R) Viqar Rashid Khan said, in his opening speech that this is a historic occasion for NTC to have achieved the milestone of establishing DRC in Lahore. This day is also important as NTC has completed its 25 years’ journey.