AP State govt moots Mana Seva centres in backward mandals

Ongole: After eSeva and Mee Seva, the Government of AP plans to introduce Mana Seva to offer eGovernance services, revenue, digital panchayat services along with the banking services to the people in villages, round the clock.

The state government wanted to introduce one stop shops to cater to the needs of rural people including the eGovernance, banking services and to register grievances, without travelling to mandal and district headquarters. These one stop shops are named as Mana Seva centres s and are sponsored by the World Bank through the Andhra Pradesh Rural Inclusive Growth Project (APRIGP) in the 150 identified backward mandals.

These Mana Seva centres will be run by village level entrepreneurs, the educated members of the women self-help groups after training. The Mana Seva centres offer more services than the services offered by the Mee Seva centres.

The services include digital panchayat services,   banking services like deposits, withdrawals and transfers, mobile recharges and bill payments, and register and track the grievances of public with all concerned departments.

The technology and infrastructure required to run these one stop shops, laptop, printer, scanner, web cam and furniture will be purchased with the funds provided by the World Bank.

The selected and trained women member of the DWCRA group, who will be called as the village level entrepreneur (VLE) will be paid Rs 2,500 for six months as incentive by Andhra Bank, the banking partner. It offers commissions from Rs 5 to 20 for opening bank account, transactions and linkage of Aadhaar number with the account. These one stop shops also offer counselling services in the women related issues. 

Gunuthoti Bhavani, the selected and trained village level entrepreneur for the Anantavaram village in Tanguturu mandal in Prakasam district said that the government promised them to provide not less than Rs 10,000 income per month, as was promised by Chief Minister.

She said that the government will pay the wages of MGNREGS through these one stop shops in coming days, which will generate considerable income in the form of commission for transactions.  

The government wants to open around 10 Mana Seva centres  in each of the 150 mandals identified by the World Bank. MS Murali, project director of the District Rural Development Agency in Prakasam district said that a total of 111 Mana Seva centers are being opened in the district. He said that the government is establishing the Mana Seva centres in the RIGP mandals first and will extend them to other districts.