The Hindu Business Line : AP to speed up work on rural Net centres

After a review meeting of some IT initiatives undertaken in the State, the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, directed that these centres need to be expedited for better delivery of services.

The State Secretary for IT, Ms Ratna Prabha, said that the issue of tying up of optical fibre cables to the APTransco poles, a contentious issue, has been sorted out and the implementation of the ambitious AP Broadband Project is being expedited.

She added that while the eSeva centres would cater to citizens' requirements in urban areas, the Rajiv Internet Villages centres would cater to people in the rural areas.

REVIEW

According to a statement from the Chief Minister's Office, the review covered the functioning of the AP Technology Services Ltd (APTS) and the Commissionerate of Electronically Deliverable Services.

Dr Reddy favoured bringing together all the service delivery channels under e-Seva, Rajiv Internet Village centres, and rural delivery centres under a single programme for effective functioning.

The Managing Director of APTS, Mr K. Praveen Kumar, said that the organisation clocked turnover of Rs 83 crore in the fiscal gone by, registering profit of Rs 3.79 crore.

APTS, apart from handling some e-Governance projects is taking care of projects such as IRIS, electronic photo identity cards, high-security number plates for vehicles, AP Broadband, and AP State Wide Area Network.

The EDS commissioner, Mr P.M. Kuriakose, said that transactions such as payment of utility bills worth over Rs 6,168 crore were made through the 1,687 EDS centres last year.

These centres supported about 600 lakh citizen transactions, with an average of 30 lakh transactions a month. These include payment of electricity and telephone bills.

More Stories on : Rural Development | E-Governance | Andhra Pradesh

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