The elderly or those who are ill and unable to make it to an office of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) can now get the services at their home.
The civic body has launched the Nagar Bandhu scheme where officials of the civic body would visit such person’s home.
Any Kolkatan can message (Whatsapp) the KMC on 83359 99111, which is a Chatbot. There will an automatic reply with ten options. The last or the tenth option is the Nagar Bandhu scheme.
On selecting the tenth option, a message will come with the five available under the scheme: problems related to assessment or property tax, mutation, booking water tanker for special occasions or in water scarce pockets, problems related to birth and
death certificates and certificate of enlistment (trade license).
The services will not be charged.
The KMC had first announced about delivering select services at the doorstep of people in April.
It was then planned that the services will be charged, but when the service was finally rolled out in January, the KMC authorities decided not to charge the beneficiaries.
“This scheme is meant to take civic services to the doorsteps of people who cannot visit KMC offices. People who are ill, persons with disabilities and the elderly can avail the scheme to get some services at their doorstep,” Binod Kumar, the former commissioner of the KMC, told The Telegraph earlier this week. Kumar handed over charge to a new commissioner on Friday.
The scheme was rolled out on January 1 and since then more than 30 people have reached out to the civic body for availing services under this scheme.
An official said that majority of the people who reached used the scheme in January were either having problems in paying the property tax or had some issues with mutation.
“One of those who reached out to us is very old. He cannot make online payments and also cannot visit the KMC’s office,” said an official.
In such instances, the civic body will send an official to the person’s home who will guide the person to make the online payment and also download the receipt from the website of the KMC.
“We can also ask the person to do a bank draft and deliver it to us,” said a civic official.
Once someone reaches out to the KMC through the Nagar Bandhu scheme, the chatbot collects basic information about the person — name, address, ward number and others.
Someone from the KMC then calls up the person to have a better understanding of the issue the person is facing.
“If there is a case of pending mutation we ask the person to keep necessary documents ready before the date of visit. We are also telling them what are the documents required,” said an official.
KMC officials admitted there was human resource crunch and as the number of people reaching out to such people needs to be increased, otherwise the time to deliver the services may go up.
“But we are trying to mantain a three to five days time for delivery of services from the day the person contacts us,” said an official.
The civic body has also introduced a system of picking an employee as the Nagar Bandhu of the month based on who delivers the services best and fastest.