Poor eSeva for Old City denizens

HYDERABAD: Residents of the Old City are being forced to wait in unending queues to pay their monthly bills or avail caste and income certificates as the government has failed to open adequate number of eSeva centres in this part of the city.
There are 56 eSeva centres in the city of which the Old City, which is host to 30% of the total city population, has to contend with only three.Apart from the woefully inadequate centres at Santoshnagar and Bahadurpura, a third centre came up less than a year ago in Vinay Nagar near Santoshnagar. A centre in Darulshifa was shut down a year ago following a fire accident on the premises.
Of the three centres in the Old City, the ....has now been rechristened Mee Seva,offering as many as 100 different services unlike the normal eSeva centres that offer only 30 services.
"It is common to see women waiting at Santoshnagar eSeva with lunch boxes as they have to wait for at least a couple of hours to get their work done. The staff is also unable to handle the crowds," rued Mohammed Abdul Azeem, a businessman.
Mir Jahangir Ali, a resident of Yakutpura, lamented that residents from localities as far as Noor Khan Bazaar are forced to go to Bahadurpura eSeva. "While applying for scholarships, timely procurement of documents has become impossible. The centre is short-staffed and technical snags are common. Frequent power failures and lack of adequate power backup facilities only add to the growing problems," he said.
Admitting that pressure from the Old City denizens is mounting on them, officials at the directorate of EDS in the government IT department said that they are striving to set up at least five centres which is the requirement in the South Zone. K Chandra Sekhar Reddy, deputy director (admin) said, "Space is a constraint in the Old City and very few private entities want to come forward to set up the centres on franchise basis. Only recently did we receive a proposal for setting up a centre in Gowlipura area. We are assessing the proposal to see if it can provide services efficiently," he said adding that they are also contemplating smaller single-counter centres in different parts of the Old City to meet the demand.