Orissa to open 8558 Common Service Centres

Bhubaneswar, Jun 17 (UNI) In a bid to provide public services at the door step of the people in rural areas, the Orissa government has decided to set up as many as 8558 Common Service Centres(CSC) on Public Private Partnership mode.

All Gram Panchayat in the state would be covered under the scheme in the next six months. A MoU in this regard was today signed by the state government with three private players --M/s SREI Infrastrcture Finance Ltd, CMS Computers Ltd and Zoom Developers.

Information Technology Secretary P K Mohapatra and IT Director Vishal Dev signed the agreement on behalf of the government with CMS National Business Manager K Jagannath, SREI Vice-President -Business Development Ranbir Das, ZOOM Developers Private Limited (e Goverance) Vice-President A K Tiwari in the presence of IT Minister S N Patro.

The entire state would be divided into six zones with four to six districts in each zone to deliver the service.

IT Minister S N Patro said the government would provide revenue support for the first four years to make the scheme sustainable.

Mr Patro said the Centre would be first opened in rural areas but later extended to urban areas.

The centres christened as ''Biju Seba Kendras'' would be operational in six months and provide employment to around 17000 people.

Each Biju Seba Kendra, he said, would have a furnished room with facilities of computer, printer, digital camera, web cam, scanner, UPS and internet connectivity.

The centre would provide public services under three category Government to citizen (G2C), Business to Consumer(B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) for a minimum fee to be fixed by the government.

The services proposed to be delivered under the scheme included land record, registration, pension scheme, utility bill payment, social information scheme, railway , examination results, market research, surveys and rural BPO services.

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