Jennifer, a ward assistant at a scan centre on Poonamallee High Road, A. Geetha, who works as a domestic help in Periamet and Venugopal, a casual labourer from Park Town, wait at the e-Sevai centre at Ripon Buildings for an income certificate. The certificate is mandatory for securing admission of their children in school.
The lone office assistant at the centre is busy scanning Ms. Geetha’s documents while the latter tries to pacify her restive daughters. “I need the certificate for school admission. The centre in Periamet said the computer did not work and sent me here. I came at 10.30 and it is almost 2. I have to get back to work,” she says.
Ms. Jennifer took the morning off from work to complete the formalities for her child’s admission. “They have issued tokens but the computer is taking so much time. I don’t think I can go to work today,” she said.
The question that begs to be asked is whether the e-Sevai service, started by the government to serve as an interface between the citizens and the State, and cut out red tape and middlemen, has served its purpose at all. Certainly, there is room for improvement, and fine-tuning, as a field-level survey indicates that the people for whom it was intended continue to be inconvenienced. The woman making entries at the e-Sevai centre at Ripon Buildings said the server was slow and this had been the case across the State for the past week. There are over 10,000 e-Sevai centres in the State. “This is peak season and many are applying for income certificates and community certificates that are needed for school admission. Students are also approaching us to register for the online counselling for college admissions. Since all of them are using the server at the same time, it is slowing down the process,” the office assistant said.
Peak season
According to the officials, as many as 92 services are offered through the facility, but only a handful are popularly sought.
Five different agencies have been given the permission to operate these centres across the State. These include the Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV Corporation Limited (TAC TV), the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Credit Society, the Village Poverty Reduction Committee, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Village Level Entrepreneurs. “This is the peak season for issuing income and community certificates. The other popular services are patta transfer, registration for pharmacies, fishermen benefits and subsidy applications,” said an official at TAC TV, which runs 198 centres in the city. He further said that only some centres are popular. It is not difficult to understand why more people are not seeking out the centres though.
“The large queue you see at a centre is indication that many people need the services but what you do not know is that these people have to keep coming back several times for just one document,” said an employee of a civic body.
“We have only two centres for Avadi and Pattabhiram, each with a population of one lakh. There is only one person in each centre. After they serve one or two persons they say the server is not working or the net connectivity is slow. Today (on Wednesday) only five persons had been attended to,” said A.S. Balaji, joint secretary of Tamil Nadu Progressive Consumer Centre.
There are other complaints too: illegible, poor quality printout or sometimes asking the person to get a printout from a browsing centre.
Toll-free number
“There is a toll-free number but when we call they refer us back to the centre. We don’t know whom to complain to,” Mr. Balaji said. The demand of Pattabhiram residents is to reopen the centre at the municipality school that had functioned only for two months.
Time is precious for first generation college students who require the certificate to register for government scholarships. “It takes 7-10 days for the certificate to be issued. The last date for application for polytechnic colleges is May 17,” he added.
M. Somasundaram, a resident of Aynavaram recalled his experience in getting a ‘ patta ’ transferred. “I went to transfer a patta and I was told to go to the centre where the property is located. They ask us for parent documents, encumbrance certificate or some other document. I was then given the contact number of the surveyor. My question is: When we are doing all the formalities online why do I need to go to some other centre, or contact the surveyor. Wasn’t the aim of the online service to cut out middlemen?” he said.
He also complained that there was no standard operating procedure for all the centres.
Mr. Somasundaram blamed it on insufficient training to the people manning the centres. “They are good and receptive but are not dedicated. The services are not consumer-oriented though it is a useful and good scheme,” he said.
The activists wondered how come the server continued to fail regularly at the centre. Why is the Information Technology department, which oversees the entire operation, not monitoring the proper functioning of the centres, they ask.
S.M. Chellasamy of the Tamil Nadu Elders’ Welfare Association said the system was working well for them.
“We had been demanding a card to identify us as pensioners. The government had earlier said the cards were not available. But now it has been sorted out. The Association has not heard any complaints,” he said. “ We are happy with the services, they make life easy for us.,” he added.
No profit service
TAC TV, which is running over 600 centres in the State conducted that a third party audit and the findings indicated that people wanted the centre to be consumer-friendly and sought better service quality, said an official. “Everything has a cost. We are running the e-sevai centre as a CSR activity and it is making a loss. Though the centres in taluk offices are a hit, the same cannot be said of those functioning in ward offices,” the official explained.
Audit
The service operators say since the financial viability is very low, further investments in each centre may not be possible. “We are in the fourth year of running the centre and it is not a profit making enterprise,” the official added. The audit has suggested that if government and private players could be allowed to run the centres then it could improve competition and thus the services too.
