"We have had the presentation on the `Y2K' and have had a special team looking at the strategy" said highly placed sources in the department of petrochemicals and chemicals.

A proposal to this effect had earlier been forwarded to hire the services of the public sector ET&T for the upgradation of all the softwares as well as the associated hardwares of the department as well as the PSUs in order to make them `Y2K' compliant.

In the strategy, according to highly placed sources in the department say, the public sector ET&T will be re-working the department's software including the basic input-output systems, real-time clocks, embedded systems, operating systems as well as other application packages that would be affected by the `Y2K' bugin the department.

Department officials said that it is feared that the Y2K bug would largely affect the shipping and the financial transactions of the industry besides the general chaos it would bring about in the office automation systems across the world.

The departmental `Y2K' coordinator has also been identified in each of the public sector units who undertake an overall supervision of the tackling of the Y2K strategy.

Highly placed sources in department say that the coordinator will be responsible for the hardware and software inventories report as well as any corrective measures that need to taken in order to straighten out the complications that would arise out of the imbroglio.

The operating agency for the Y2K task for the department - ET&T, would not only be serving as its vendor but would also assist in taking the stock of the department's hardware and software inventories as well as doing a follow up action on any corrective measures required by the department in the wake of anypersistence of the problem.

It may be recalled that the department has already worked out the necessary inputs to be forwarded through the coordinators to the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers.

The department had, thereafter conducted a high level meeting with the nodal `Y2K' action group of the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The meeting which was presided by the NC Gupta, senior technical director, NIC as well as RP Saxena, senior technical director, NIC has also identified the key areas of concern for the department.