Villages soon to avail utility services at the click of a mouse

The state government is ready with its first common service centre (CSC) — Guru Computer Centre — at the village. The centre, catering to the people of six villages of the area and run by a woman village level entrepreneur (VLE), is ready to be formally inaugurated by Chief Minister Mayawati.

“The people of nearby villages have already started pouring in to avail the facilities available at the centre,” said centre head Pramila

Bahadur. At present, the services being catered by the centre includes information on train timings, share market, mandi rates, city map, legal services and tourism related queries.

Soon, through the center, one will be able to pay bills for electricity, telephone, credit card, water tax, loan and so on.

By the year-end, the centre plans to give specialised services for all kinds of registrations — birth and death certificates, government forms, among others.

Such facilities will be available at all the 17,909 computerised common service centers coming up across the state with high-speed broadband connection. There will be one such center for six villages to be run on a Public Private Partnership model.

“These centers are to function as a bridge between the service providers — both government and private — and the consumers,” said an official of the Department of Information Technology and Electronics.

“The villagers, by paying a fixed amount, will be able to avail any government or private service at these centers,” he added.

The centers, being set up under the Centre’s National e-Governance Project, will function through the UP State-Wide Area Network. Three agencies — the state government, Bhartiya Sanchar Nigam Limited and the National Informatics Center — have set up the base for the centers.