Mysuru: Karnataka State’s ambitious Nemmadi Kendra kiosks across the city and district have stopped functioning due to server problem. The centres have not been functioning since two months and thousands of people who come to these centres have been put to severe inconvenience.

Nemmadi Kendras provide 38 different types of certificates, including income, caste,family tree, authentication certificates and is of much help to the physically challenged, widows, the elderly and people from weaker sections of society as they can get their certificates to avail benefits from various government schemes.

An initiative of the Department of E-Governance, the Nemmadi Kendras provide services for income certificate, widow pension, caste certificate, domicile certificate, birth and death certificates (birth and death authentication certificates), land records based on family tree and other related services.

There are seven Nemmadi Kendras in city and two among them are established at Mini Vidhana Soudha at Nazarbad, which houses the offices of the Sub-Registrar, Taluk Office, Taluk Panchayat, Assistant Director of Land Records, Assistant Director of Agriculture and many more offices. Other Nemmadi Kendra kiosks have been set up at Corporation Offices at Akashavani Circle, Jayanagar, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Circle, Hebbal and FTS Circle.  

All the centres have been facing server problem since the beginning of June. “There is no regular service here. Sometimes the server is on while most of the times it is down,” said a resident of Hebbal. On an average, over 2,500 applications for various certificates are accumulated every day at these seven centres within the city limits.

People who come from far-flung areas of Mysuru taluk every day are being turned away. “I have come from a village near Jayapura and I wanted to take an eligibility certificate for my widow pension. But here the officials have told me to come after a month,” said 65-year-old Sakamma, who lost her husband recently and desperately needs money  to sustain.

One of the staff working at the Nemmadi Kendra said that the server problem exists in many districts across the State. “The central server is located in Bengaluru and most of the times, our servers are down and we are not able to connect to the main server. The services have been affected in Periyapatna, Nanjangud, H.D. Kote, K.R. Nagar, Hunsur, Srirangapatna and Mandya also,” he said.

Another person, who was manning an empty counter, said that there must be two persons to man one Nemmadi Kendra.

“Here, the contractor who has bagged the tender to supply workforce has deployed only one person per Nemmadi Kendra and he is billing the government for two persons in connivance with senior officials,” he said on condition of anonymity.

“We have not been given salary since the last six months and only in April this year, we got some pending dues. After April, we have not been paid,” another staff at Nemmadi Kendra said. He alleged that when C. Shikha was the Mysuru Deputy Commissioner she had blacklisted the contractor for unsatisfactory services. “Now the same contractor has bagged the tender after he changed the name of the company,” he alleged.

It may be recalled here that Star of Mysore had, on June 28, published a report ‘Server down at Mini Vidhana Soudha’ and after three days, the server was set right. But the servers functioned only for three days.