For years they have been sitting in front of sub-registrar offices earning money by writing documents. With the government introducing online registration system, more than 800 document writers in Coimbatore district face a bleak future.S Easwaran, president of Coimbatore District Document Writers’ Association, said that while implementing the online registration on a pilot basis in 50 sub-registrar offices in the state, the government made an agreement with Tata Consultancy Services for providing the necessary software."Online document registration was made mandatory last week. We are not against this, but we are requesting the government to allow offline registration also," said Easwaran.He said guideline values, sub-registrar’s office registration book numbers, survey numbers etc., should be created by the sub-registrar for online registration. But the sub-registrar or staff of the registration department have not created the index and the document writers are forced to create index instead of the staff of the registration department."The main server of the department is often down and the document writers are not able to complete their work for online registration. The department has given authority to the sub-registrar to provide token privacy (TP) number. If he delays providing the number, the entire registration process gets delayed. There are many chances of corruption for providing the TP number on a priority basis and approving the online documentation," said Easwaran.Before implementing online registration, around 200 registrations were done on an auspicious day in the Kinathukadavu and Periyanaickenplayam sub-registrar offices. Now the officials can have a maximum of 40 registrations. This will registration in the district, he added.P Vivekanandan, a document writer from the Gandhipuram sub-registrar office, said the document writers were forced to pay the stamp duty (7%) and registration fee (4%) online to the department of registration. "I had done the online payment of Rs 1.91 lakh to the registration department from my SBI account and my transaction was successful. But the department officials said they did not get the amount and asked me to pay Rs 1.91 lakh again. It was my client’s money and how can I get money from them again. Finally, I threatened to commit suicide if the amount is not deposited to the department account. The next day the amount was deposited in the account," said Vivekanandan.He said online registration is taking too much time. So, the state government should allow manual document writing too for online registration.M A Sajitha Banu, who has been working under a document writer for the past 16 years, said she does not know how to fill many columns while doing online registration. "Many women are working under document writers in Coimbatore. We depend on manual document writing and the government should allow us to follow the old methods. Otherwise we will lose our jobs and our families will suffer," said Sajitha Banu.

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