The Times of India 09.01.2014
GVMC moots CLCs to provide citizen services at doorstep
VISAKHAPATNAM: Tired of waiting for that plumber or electrician that you called last week, to turn up at your doorstep? Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GMVC) could bring your wait to an end soon, if its plans to set up City Livelihood Centres (CLC), on the lines of those in Pune, with financial assistance from the Centre, to bridge the gap between citizen services and supply, materialise.
If the CLC concept takes off, it will benefit thousands of skilled workers and lakhs of citizens and will see GVMC emerge as an employment exchange of sorts, showing skilled vocational workers the available employment opportunities and directing the suitable worker to the doorstep of the households to attend to complaints such as repairs of fans, televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators, furniture, housekeeping, security, carpentry, gardening, construction, plumbing, electrical works, healthcare support and even for helpers required for payment of electricity and phone bills.
GVMC will decide the service charges and will collect nearly 5-10% of the service charges from the skilled workers as fee for the maintenance of the CLCs. To ensure citizen safety, GVMC will also provide the database of vocational services providers to the city police so that they can be tracked down in case of any untoward incident.
As per the guidelines issued by Centre's National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) a few months ago in 2013, GVMC is the first civic body in the state to be ready to establish CLCs in the city to provide services. CLCs are nothing but call centres where GVMC can provide helpline numbers of service providers on demand from citizens. GVMC will collect details of those providing vocational services in the city and put together a computerized database, said D Panduranga Rao, project director, Urban Community Development Centre, GVMC.
As per NULM guidelines, it is mandatory to put up one CLC in each town or city with a population ranging from one to three lakh and for big cities like Visakhapatnam, where the population is over 10 lakh, a maximum of eight CLCs will have to be set up, he added.
"As per the NULM norms, we have proposed eight CLCs in the GVMC limits, including the merged Anakapalle and Bheemili towns and we will be the first to implement it in the state. As per the details of the available buildings furnished by the eight zonal commissioners, we have preliminarily identified buildings for establishment of the proposed CLCs. The project report has been sent to the Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA) at Hyderabad, which will forward it to the Centre for allocation of funds," Panduranga Rao told TOI.
As many as 7,54,140 urban poor (households) in the city will be able to avail services of the eight GVMC CLCs and a total of 3,650 skilled works will be benefitted through self-employment opportunities, as per GVMC's project report.
Initially, one or two persons may be recruited to run each CLC, which will be equipped with the requisite furniture like chairs, tables, computers, phone, racks and the like. "Nearly Rs 15 lakh is required to set up a full-fledged CLC, where GVMC's contribution will be around Rs 5 lakh. The Centre will provide the remaining amount on an installment basis to the GVMC. We are hoping to start work on full steam on CLCs by next month," Rao added.
