The Punjab Government has fully geared up its administrative machinery for the timely completion of construction & Operationalization of 2174 Sewa Kendras in rural and urban areas. Under the project, apart from setting up Sewa Kendras, the services of every department would be made available to citizens at their door steps in a hassle-free manner, within a minimum time period from these centers.
Chief Secretary Sarvesh Kaushal today reviewed the progress of Sewa Kendras in a high level meeting with officials of Department of Governance Reforms and Deputy Commissioners through video conference.Under this project, as per the vision of Punjab CM Shri Parkash Singh Badaland,Deputy CM Punjab Shri Sukhbir Singh Badal, 1,750 rural and 424 urban unified service delivery centers would be established to provide 223 citizen-centric services to the urban as well as rural populace under a single roof. During this review, Chief Secretary reviewed the progress of allocation of construction work with all the Deputy Commissioners.
The official spokesperson said that during the review meeting , it was informed by Deputy Commissioners that work at 1273 centers have already been allocated to construction agencies. Further he said that, the various bottlenecks in allocations of work were discussed and instructions were given to the Government agencies like PWD, Mandi Board to resolve the issues immediately and allocate the work of remaining centers by January 15th 2015.Chief Secretary instructed Secretary Governance Reforms to have meeting with senior officials of BSNL to resolve all connectivity issues to impart seamless connectivity to Sewa Kendras.
pulging more about the progress of work, the Spokesperson said that construction work has already started in 123 Sewa Kendras of District Jalandhar, 123 Sewa Kendras of Ludhiana, 115 Sewa Kendras of Amritsar, 112 Sewa Kendras of Hoshiarpur, 110 Sewa Kendras of Bathinda whereas substantial progress has been made by other districts also.The System Integrator is being finalized for setting up computing infrastructure& providing manpower for running these Sewa Kendras. 16 multinational companies have already shown their interest in running these centers during the pre-bid meeting of this tender.
Disclosing this here, a spokesperson said in urban areas, one such center would be planned within a radius of 1.5 to 2.5 square kilometres, based upon the population density. In rural areas, one service delivery center would be planned for every cluster of villages having a population between 8,000 and 10,000. The standardized design & layout of these centers have already been finalized by the office of Chief Architect Punjab. Once the construction of these centers is completed, the System Integrator appointed by the Department of Governance Reforms shall set up computing infrastructure, provide manpower and operationalize these Sewa Kendras for integrated online delivery of 223 citizen services of various departments.
Chief Secretary also appreciated the diligent effort made by the Deputy Commissioners to reduce the backend pendency of citizen service applications in Suwidha Centers for services under RTS act from 1, 09,157 in June 2014 to just 1959 in January 2015 which is merely 0.1% of the total applications received in the Suwidha centers of the State. Prominent amongst others who were present in the meeting included Mr. R K Verma, Secretary Governance Reforms, Sh H S Kandhola, Director Governance Reforms, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) B.S Dhaliwal. Technical Advisor to Chief Minister, MsSapna, Chief Architect and other officials of Department of Governance Reforms and construction agencies.