Date index for Dec 2002

hi, 

we have just installed latest version of achievo. while pointing the browser 
to htdocs directly, we are getting following error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: mysql_pconnect() in 
/var/www/html/achievo-0.8.4/atk/db/class.atkmysqldb.inc on line 49

kindly help us. thanks in advance.