Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Akshaya entrepreneurs to be selected soon

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The process of selecting entrepreneurs for running the e-centres of Akshaya in six districts will begin in a couple of days.

These districts — Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Idukki, Wayanad and Palakkad — are the only areas which are yet to be covered under the project, which aims at providing Information Communication Technology (ICT) access to people in remote areas.

Launched in Malappuram by the Kerala State IT Mission with the active participation of local self-government institutions in 2003, the project aims at providing avenues to the people to acquire minimum computer skills through functional IT literacy programmes.

Director of the Akshaya project K Anvar Sadath told The Hindu here on Sunday that the first level of the entrepreneur selection process would be completed by this month-end and as per the original schedule the rollout of the project would begin in September.

The proposal was to provide e-literacy to at least one member of all the 6.4 million households in the State by December 2008, he said.

Pointing out that the project worked on a public-private participation (PPP) mode, Mr. Sadath said the local entrepreneurs selected for its implementation would have to invest about Rs.3 lakh for setting up e-centres with five to ten computers, printers, scanners, web cam and other peripherals, besides the necessary software.

The local bodies provided a substantial amount as e-literacy fund to impart computer literacy to the people of the area and this enabled the entrepreneur to recover a major portion of the money they invested.

The e-centres also functioned as service delivery points to the local population, providing them e-payment facilities for collecting and distributing utility payments such as the bills of electricity, telephone, mobile, water and even railway tickets.

They also acted as a facility for linking farmers through a transaction-based platform, under the e-krishi programme being implemented in the State with the support of national and international agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Various educative programmes based on interactive CD Roms such as e-Vidya and Learn and Speak English are also run through the e-centres, with certification from the Kerala IT Mission.

“Each Akshaya centre is expected to cater to 2,000 to 2,500 households and about 1,600 such centres are already working in the eight districts where the project has been implemented,” he said.

Mr. Sadath said that as per estimates, 1,173 e-centres would have to be set up in the six districts where the project was going to be implemented in the next phase.

Among them, 296 would be in Thiruvananthapuram, 222 in Alappuzha, 204 in Kottayam, 125 in Idukki, 255 in Palakkad and 71 in Wayanad. Most of the local bodies in these districts had already identified the locations to set up e-centres. He said that if agencies such as Kudumbasree had the facilities to start e-centres at any of the identified locations, they could be given sanction without going through the conventional selection process.

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