About 600,000 villages will benefit from these centres, which will be built at a total cost of Rs 5,742 crore, an official spokesperson told reporters after the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
"The scheme is aimed at making all government services accessible to the common people in their locality," the spokesperson said.
The government expects to generate 100,000 jobs directly through the project and an additional 200,000 more indirect jobs.
The common service centres are to be rolled out in 18 months by March 2008.
These centres are considered a strategic cornerstone of the National E.Governance Plan approved by the government in May this year as part of its commitment under the National Common Minimum Programme to introduce e.governance on a massive scale.
The common service centres are one of the three infrastructure pillars of e.governance to ensure "anytime anywhere" web-enabled delivery of government services.
The other two are the State Wide Area Network Connectivity, approved at a cost of Rs 3,334 crore, and State Data Centres.
The common centres will be the front-end for delivering a range of government services, including payment of electricity bills, various applications, vocational training and weather information.
The 100,000 villages under the project will become internet-enabled through broadband offering a basket of government-to-citizen and business-to-customer services.
Quelle/Source: The Hindu, 22.09.2006
