Nearly 35 UID card registration machines are lying unused at the tehsil office, as no private agency appointed by the state government is coming forward to operate them. The reason is the exorbitant bank guarantee amount they have to tender for every single machine
Considering the central government’s plan of rolling out the direct benefit transfer scheme in the district from November 1, under which the subsidy for LPG consumers is to be transferred directly to the Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts, the state government has provided 70 UID card registration machines to speed up the entire process. However, unable to provide the bank guarantee amount of worth Rs. 1.1 lakh, the UID machines are gathering dust at the tehsil office.
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According to the Information and Technology department, the private agencies, which are not registered with the Citizens Service Centre not only have to give the bank guarantee of Rs 1.1 lakh, but also have to pay Rs 7,000 as monthly rent to operate the UID card machines.
Besides, every such agency should have annual turnover of over Rs 10.9 lakh. “We are not getting any response from the 15 private agencies that are presently authorised to operate the UID card machines in the district regarding the bank guarantee.
A few of these outfits approached us, but they do not have enough operating staff. That’s the precise reason the 35 machines are lying unutilised,” said district nodal officer of UID, Vasundhara Barve. She also added that apart from this problem, another cause of the problem is lack of machine operating staff in the district.
When contacted, state IT secretary Rajesh Agrawal said that UID registration through private agencies is just a temporary measure, as after a couple of years registration work would be done directly through SETU centres and municipal councils.
“We have recently signed MoU with Citizens Service Centre. So, those agencies, which have registered with CSC, would not have to give bank guarantee. Similarly, the rent paid by them would be reimbursed. This will help in smooth functioning of UID registration using the machines provided to the district administration,” said Agrawal. u00a0
Go figure
Presently there are 232 UID registration centres in the district where 449 UID machines are being operated by private agencies. Till date 70 per cent of UID registration work has been done and 27.66 lakh citizens in the district have been catalogued.
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