The Times of India 11.08.2012
Hubli Dharwad Municipal Corporation-run info kiosks are a dud
HUBLI: The setting up of kiosks to disseminate information about civic services and about north Karnataka has failed to serve the purpose.
It cost Rs 8.61 lakh
for the civic body to install seven kiosks at airport, the
commissioner's office in Hubli and Dharwad, and its zonal offices. But
most of them are defunct in the last eight months. Reason: no update of
info in the last two years.
Data needing updations include the
names of officers of various departments, list of zonal officers,
services relating to tax, revenue and other departments, water tariff,
property tax, contact numbers of departments, the names of elected
representatives."Lack of updations has prompted HDMC to stop the service of kiosks," said a zonal officer, on condition of anonymity.
"We get disturbed while working when people repeatedly ask about
updated information at the kiosks set up at our zonal offices. We
thought of stopping the functioning of kiosks as the data has not been
updated in the last two years. But we will resume their services once
the data is updated," he added.
When contacted, mayor Pandurang Patil said the work of updating has been outsourced to a Bangalore-based IT company."We have asked them to keep all the kiosks updated. But it is not
happening. I will remind them about this so that updation is done at the
earliest," he added.
"According to the data in kiosks,
Venkatesh Mestri is still the mayor, even though his term has ended two
years ago. Also, the contacts of many offices and the names of officers
are wrong. HDMC should update the data for the benefit of people," said
Guru Joshi, a businessman, highlighting the urgency to do the same.
