In pandemic-hit Delhi, people opt for doorstep delivery of govt services

According to Delhi government officials, bulk of the requests are related to the revenue department. Transport and Delhi Jal Board are the other two departments which have received most requests.

Over a month after the Delhi government resumed doorstep delivery of services, it has received 11,612 requests and over 93,321 calls at its centralised number, 1076, till October 8, shows official data.

A healthcare worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) collects a swab sample from a man amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease at a weekly market in New Delhi. (REUTERS)

According to Delhi government officials, bulk of the requests are related to the revenue department. Transport and Delhi Jal Board are the other two departments which have received most requests.

The doorstep delivery service, which was launched in September 2018, was closed for over five months due to the nationwide lockdown was announced due to the Coronavirus pandemic. With admissions going on in schools and colleges, the district magistrates’ offices were getting a lot of requests from people to get income, caste, domicile etc certificates.

People had to queue up outside the DM offices to get the certificates in June and July. However, they can now get them delivered to their houses.

Of the 11,612 service requests, 10,873 were for the revenue department which provides 15 services, including certificates for income, caste (SC/ST/OBC), domicile, dead and birth orders, etc. As per the data provided by the Delhi government, the revenue department has disposed of nearly 80% of the requests (8,618) by September 23.

The transport department, which provides 19 services under the scheme, has received the second highest number of requests. Of the 377 requests received, 127 have been disposed of. The DJB, which has four services under the scheme, has disposed of 118 out of 171 requests till September 23.

An official said, the remaining are under process—under the service level agreement, a service request has to be processed within 14 days from the date of booking.

Transport and revenue minister Kailash Gahlot, who is also head of administrative reforms department that manages the doorstep deliver service, said, “People have been waiting for doorstep delivery of services to resume, especially in the wake of Covid, and we have tried to scale up our services since resumption on September 1.”

He added, “Our call centres have been functional as soon as they were allowed to resume as per Unlock guidelines of the government, and we had ensured disposal of all pending applications before we resumed services. With Covid-specific standard operating procedures in place, I am sure this will revolutionise the way in which public services are delivered in our country and play a key role in reducing spread of the viral disease in government offices.”

While the government is getting a lot of calls, officials say, not all calls turn into service requests. “It is because many are queries and the appointment is not booked until unless we ensure the applicant has all the documents available. Moreover, no bookings are being taken for containment zones. On an average, we get 350 service requests daily,” said an official, aware of the development.

While the service is gradually picking up, the biggest challenge before the government is to deliver at a time when the number of cases are on a rise and there are over 2,700 containment zones.

The frequently changing containment zone list is adding to the difficulty in providing the service. Explaining the problem, an official said, a person might not be in a hot spot when the service request is booked. But when the mobile Sahayaks, roped in by the government to provide the service at the doorsteps, visit them, it is possible that by then the area would have been declared a containment zone.

A senior official with the administrative reforms department said, “Our mobile sahayaks call the person before paying a visit. If the person’s house is in a containment zone on the day of the visit, then we postpone the service. We can’t provide services in containment zones. The service request will be processed after 15 days or when the area is out of the containment list. The call centre is updated with information about the containment zone.”

For its ambitious project, the Delhi government had outsourced the work field work to VFS Global, which had hired mobile sahayaks, for hassle-free doorstep delivery of service. “The well-being and health and safety of the mobile sahayaks and citizens remain the focal point of our safety measures, which include: no appointments being taken in containment areas, wearing of adequate protective gear, such as masks, gloves and usage of sanitisers by all team members, following of physical distancing norms, and mandatory downloading of the Aarogya Setu application by all team members to assist them in tracking of safety norms in different areas,” VFS Global said in a statement.