The common service centres were opened by the government in Dhubri villages to help people living in the remotest corners find easy access to e-governance, banking, railway and air ticket booking, mobile charging and telephone bill payment.
It was envisioned to be a platform that would enable the government, private and social organisations to integrate their social and commercial goals for the benefit of rural people.
Entrepreneurs linked with the service centres in Dhubri, however, have alleged that Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited, which has signed a memorandum with the state government to open common service centre through the public-private partnership mode has failed to provide the promised services.
The president of the Dhubri District Village Level Entrepreneurs Sanstha, Surajit Roy, said 95 common service centres have been launched in Dhubri since last year under the National eGovernance Plan.
“But instead of providing services to the centres, better known as Arunoday Kendra, Srei Infrastructure has been pressuring the village entrepreneur to sign loan documents,” Roy alleged.
He wondered how one could pay back a bank loan of Rs 1,20,000 at a monthly instalment of Rs 4,500 when the earnings were not even Rs 2,000 a month. Roy also alleged that most of the services promised through the centres have not been provided by Srei Infrastructure.
Secretary of the entrepreneurs’ organisation, A.H.M. Fazlul Hoque, also alleged that the materials supplied by Srei were of poor quality.
Moreover, the centres in Dhubri district have not been supplied with an operating system disk which is included in the list of materials to be provided by the infrastructure company. The entrepreneurs’ organisation submitted a memorandum last week to the Dhubri deputy commissioner, Jatindra Lahakar, and sought his intervention to solve the problems.
The Dhubri district manager of Srei, Tinku Biswas, however, brushed these aside as teething problems.
“Very soon we will be able to provide all the services to centres. It was only on August 4 that a decision was taken to add more services to the centres. We hope the problems will be sorted out within very short time,” Biswas said.
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Quelle/Source: The Calcutta Telegraph, 21.08.2009
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