When the Aam Aadmi Party launched its doorstep-delivery of government services scheme in Delhi, it was met with skepticism. However, in less than a year, it became a massive hit. It has proved so successful that Andhra Pradesh followed suit. Now, the state government has taken a leaf out of Delhi’s book and launched a similar scheme.
Delhi government data shows 99.5% of the 2.2 lakh requests were successfully delivered. The question is, can Karnataka’s Jan Sevaks better Delhi’s Mobile Sahayaks? The national capital has a bigger population (1.9 crore) and radius (1,484sq km) than Bengaluru (estimated 1.1 crore and 800sqkm) , but traffic snarls in the city dubbed the country’s ‘Silicon Valley’ are legendary and it could prove a big hurdle.
E-governance department officials say this is the prime reason why the government is charging a fee of Rs 115 per service as opposed to the nominal Rs 50 levied by the Delhi government. Also the state government will not bear costs, unlike in Delhi where the entire delivery scheme is subsidized by the government.
The BS Yediyurappa government has reportedly outsourced the delivery contract to an agency which owns a fleet of two-wheelers, tablets (to scan and upload documents) and other equipment.
“A private firm has been roped in to deliver services, but with our authorisation,” said an official. The official went on to say that tenders will be called soon which could result in delivery charges being reduced.
The government claims the pilot conducted in T Dasarahalli over the last seven months — June to January— was 100% success as it fulfilled all 33,000 services requests it received.
“Keeping cost of travel and under-the-table payments in mind, most citizens were more than willing to pay Rs 115 for a service to be delivered at their doorsteps our feedbacks shows,” said a government official.
The bigger challenge though is to scale up the system quickly and meet targets in a time-bound manner. In the 24 hours since the scheme was announced, the Jan Sevak desk has been flooded with requests and time slots are being booked at an increasing pace. This could derail the service.
The department is also planning to engage resident welfare associations (RWA) to ensure a systematic and transparent approach to delivering services.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Sandeep Moudgal
Quelle/Source: The Times of India, 06.02.2020
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
