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Karnataka to set up 800 tele centres in rural area

In an effort to combat corruption in rural areas, the Karnataka Government will launch ' Nemmadi,' a novel scheme to provide succour to the rural masses through tele centres, a one stop shop for delivering various services to the people at their doorsteps, from first week of October.

Disclosing this to newsmen here Revenue Minister Jagadish Shettar said 37 various types of services would be offered by these centres.
They included provision of certificates covering a wide range of topics such as birth, death, caste and income, residence, widow, landholding,non creamy layer, solvency and unemployment. Each service would cost Rs 15 and in some cases like pension it was much less. This would serve as a boon to the rural masses, he explained.

Replying to queries he said a consortium of three private companies led by 3i Infotech, a technology solutions company, would invest Rs 30 crores to set up 800 tele centres in villages to deliver all government services. It would be run on Public Private Partnership with minimal investment from the government but with tight control to regulate quality services.

Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy would launch the first set of 25 tele centres during first week of October followed by opening of 275 tele centres on November one. By January next, the remaining 500 tele centres would become operational. The Whole state needed 5500 tele centres each per Grama Panchayat, he added saying it would be implemented in five years.
He observed that it was another feather in the cap of Karnataka which had already earned accolades by introducing citizen centric e-Governance projects such as Bhoomi, Kaveri and Bangalore One.

e-Governance Secretary Rajeev Chawla, who was also present here, said each tele centre would have physically handicapped people as employees as desired by the Chief Minister which would be 30 per cent of the total employees.

posted by News India @ 11:02 PM