The Transport, Marketing, Stamps and Registration and other departments have come under severe stress in Nellore district ever since the demonetisation programme launched by the Centre has led to severe cash crunch in the market.
Sensing the definitive steps being taken in the direction of cashless transactions, the district officials have initiated efforts and got nearly 85 swiping machines installed in various departments in association with the respective banks.
The payments using debit and credit cards at the government departments have come as a breather for the public, who have started making use of them in a steadily increasing frequency.
With cash circulation still under strain, the officials have decided to step up the cashless payments by getting another 4,300 swiping machines for all the departments where payments are received from the public on a daily basis.
The officials have indicated to the government employees, pensioners and all those associated with the departmental activities to compulsorily have bank accounts along with the necessary net banking facilities to carry out total online transactions in the coming days.
District Collector R. Mutyala Raju told The Hindu that there were 1,891 fair price (ration) shop dealers in Nellore district and all of them had been instructed to open current accounts in their local banks.
Mobile banking
“This will facilitate total cashless transactions.
“ Similar efforts were being made for educational institutions and engineering colleges,” he added.
In rural areas, where internet availability and usage are scarce, efforts are being made to identify the scope for SMS-based banking so as to promote cashless transactions.
Farmers, agricultural workers and even uneducated rural folks can be introduced to mobile banking by creating awareness among them about their bank accounts seeding with their mobile numbers and the modalities of managing their mobile banking passwords.
Recently, Mr. Mutyala Raju along with Deputy Transport Commissioner N. Sivaram Prasad inspected the functioning of the swiping machines introduced at the Transport office here.
They enquired from the visiting public about the ease in doing cashless transactions.
There are nearly 2.44 lakh pensioners in the Nellore district and 78 per cent of them have got their bank accounts seeded with their Aadhaar numbers.
