ISLAMABAD, 13 October 2026 — A test that was meant to confirm routine maintenance has exposed a timing fault at 27 of 40 sites on Pakistan’s government data network, with the largest clock mismatch reaching 11.8 seconds. The finding has turned a nine-day walkout by public network technicians into a dispute over whether the state can safely keep the system running.
The measurements were taken during a 36-hour check by the fictional Pakistan Network Measurement Centre, which compared network timestamps with a portable reference clock. The national relay links 14 data hubs and routes sign-ins for public services used by about 24 million accounts, according to the operator, the National Digital Relay Authority.
A gap hidden in routine checks
The authority had reported 99.4% service availability last week. But the centre’s readings showed that 27 sites were more than two seconds out of sync, well beyond its stated tolerance of 250 milliseconds. The test did not establish that users’ personal records had been altered or that services had failed.
The mismatch matters because the network uses timestamps to order requests and validate some short-lived sign-in codes. A delay of several seconds can cause a code to expire or make two events appear in the wrong sequence, said Rick Willems, an independent network engineer who reviewed the measurement summary. “The number is large enough that calling this routine drift is no longer credible,” he said.
We asked for people to check the clocks; the test showed the clocks had been left to check themselves.
Romans Skuja, technicians’ union delegate
The walkout began on 5 October after technicians rejected a proposed shift rota and a freeze on overtime payments. The authority says it has offered a 7% wage adjustment and that only 18 of its 620 staff are on strike. The union says 146 technicians have stopped work or refused standby shifts, leaving fewer specialists available to service timing equipment.
Strike talks hit a hard deadline
The government’s handling of the dispute has drawn accusations of brinkmanship from the union, which says officials are relying on automated monitoring while experienced staff remain outside the system. The authority’s deputy director, Pauleta Kants, said the network had not suffered a confirmed outage and that engineers were checking the affected hubs. “We will not call a system unsafe on one reading, but we will not dismiss the reading either,” she said.
The operator has not published the site-by-site results. It says the measurements were taken during a controlled test and could reflect a faulty reference setting, rather than clocks drifting in normal operation. The measurement centre said its reference instrument was checked before and after the run, and that the 11.8-second discrepancy appeared at the same hub in three separate comparisons.
The strike’s next test comes on Wednesday, when technicians are due to decide whether to extend their refusal of overnight standby shifts. The authority says it can keep core services operating with managers and contractors, but has postponed a planned software update for the relay. The union wants a written staffing guarantee before talks resume.
For now, users can still access government portals, and officials have not advised people to repeat applications or payments. The timing result has nevertheless forced a public choice: keep the network running while the specialists who maintain it stay away, or pause changes until both the clocks and the labour dispute are brought under control.
