T-Wallet, the only State Government e-wallet in the country, will soon be playing a much bigger role from currently handling small-time payments to various departments absolutely free. The Government is now planning to do payments for pensions, wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) and to the Self- Help Groups (SHGs) digitally through it.
“We are planning digital transfer in such a manner that it will be possible for those without a smart phone also to receive payments and be able to withdraw their wages from the nearest bank whenever required through money transfer. Bank linkages for SHGs will be done through this,” disclosed Commissioner (Electronic Service Delivery) and Special Commissioner (e-governance), G.T. Venkateshwar Rao.
There are 40 lakh SHG members across the State and these could be first brought into the wallet and other beneficiaries too once the pilot project is tested. The Government has already waived the fee being charged for digital payments through the wallet which has been downloaded by 2.90 lakh persons and 38 more departments have joined the digital platform.
In the last five months of the launch, about eight crore payments have been made mostly pertaining to ‘small bill’ payments of civic departments like GHMC, Water Board and so on.
MeeSeva glitches
As far as MeeSeva services are concerned the Commissioner conceded about a few glitches in the functioning of the service but pointed out that efforts were on to rectify them so that the citizen can get quicker and more reliable service without frequent breakdowns.
While the second generation MeeSeva 2.0 is supposed to be operational by March 2018 with complete new look and faster speeds with new hardware with latest standards in design, the authorities are planning to introduce token system in select centres to prevent crowding at the counters and also install closed circuit television cameras for monitoring the flow during peak timings.
“There are some challenges because of sheer volume as we are still doing about 1.75 lakh transactions a day and we are addressing them,” says Mr. Rao. A single service provider has been put in place as against multiple ones earlier for uniformity and faster payments.
