Many SDMC citizen service centres run only on paper, say RWAs

Local councillors have alleged that many CSCs in their area remain non-operational, and several RWAs added that no such units were there in their areas. The lack of such facilities has hit the citizens who do not have access to digital devices.

Nearly one year after the South Delhi Municipal Corporation cleared a proposal to set up a large number of Citizen Service Centres (CSCs) in municipal wards to provide access to digital services such as issuance of certificates and licenses, a large number of such facilities continue to exist only in papers.

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) runs 1,441 citizen service centres. But councillors and RWAs say many of them don’t exist. The SDMC mayor said they will review the matter. (HT Photo)

Local councillors have alleged that many CSCs in their area remain non-operational, and several RWAs added that no such units were there in their areas. The lack of such facilities has hit the citizens who do not have access to digital devices.

The official website of the south corporation lists 1,441 citizen service centres where services like birth certificate and death certificate, updating birth certificate and filing of property tax returns have been operationalised. 477 centres are listed in the Central zone, 307 in Najafgarh zone, 338 in the South zone and 319 in the West zone. Last year, the civic agency signed an agreement with a company for setting up these services.

The centres are expected to provide 13 more services such as veterinary licence, community hall booking, e-mutation of properties among others. CSCs can charge citizens Rs10-Rs100 for providing assistance in accessing these services under various categories.

Atul Goel, president of URJA (United Residents Joint Action) --a collective body of RWAs, said the process of digitisation of services needs to be reviewed. “I have only seen one such centre. Overall, the new service portals developed by corporation are not performing well, and people end up paying cyber cafes or touts for accessing services. The quality of digital services can be gauged from the fact that corporation doesn’t provide any acknowledgement, and it will not inform applicants about faults in the rejected applications,” he added.

Chetan Sharma, general secretary of the Confederation of NCR RWAs said that they are not aware of any such CSC centres operational in Greater Kailash area.

Khanpur councillor Suresh Kumar Gupta said earlier people were able to get a certificate manually by paying ₹10. Now, they are forced to pay Rs500 to private cyber cafe operators for the same online service, he added.

“80% of applications get rejected. We should open assistance counters in zonal offices to help people,” Gupta said. Other members of standing committee agreed that people are facing problems in accessing even basic services such as getting birth and death certificates.

Standing committee chairman Col (retd) BK Oberoi acknowledged the problem and added that the project will be reviewed.

“We agree that this problem exists. Many of these CSCs are not working. We will review their operations. If people are not doing their job after signing agreement with SDMC, they are either professionally not capable or not taking their work seriously. We can choose a new vendor if required,” Oberoi said.