The Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) will soon provide free laptops to the ward councillors of all the 53 wards under the civic body as part of its digital push to encourage public representatives to address issues related to civic utilities online. “It also aims to get them habituated to using computers,” officials from RMC said on Monday.

According to the officials, RMC has procured at least 55 laptops, one for each of the 53 ward councillors and one each for the mayor and deputy mayor.

“The laptops should be made available to all the ward councillors by the end of this month. We will also provide basic computer training to them so that they can operate the portable computers and at least access emails and other important websites related to work,” said Ranchi Municipal Commissioner, Mukesh Kumar.

“Distributing laptops among the ward councillors and training them to use the gadget will help the RMC achieve its target of going completely paperless and rely on digital mediums as far as possible,” said Kumar. He added that these days most of RMC’s documentation is done online.

The ward councillors will get to use these laptops throughout their term and surrender the gadgets in “working condition” on the completion of their tenure as civic body representatives, informed the officials.

“The laptops will remain government property, and the councillors will get to use them only during their tenure,” said an RMC official, actively involved in the initiative.

“The training will be provided by the National Informatics Centre and the sessions will be focused on using various applications or websites that are used regularly for various works under the RMC,” the official said. He then added, “Many ward councillors do not have much knowledge about computers and may find it difficult to operate them if they were not trained.”

Ranchi’s Mayor Asha Lakra admitted that providing laptops to the ward councillors will make their work easier. She said that municipal councillors in the city have been demanding laptops since 2018, but the process of providing the gadgets to them got delayed due to various reasons.

“Providing laptops to ward councillors will obviously help. But I think this should have been done earlier,” she said.

According to a source from RMC, the laptops provided to the mayor and the deputy mayor would be worth at least Rs.70,000, while those distributed among the ward councillors may cost about Rs.50,000 each.