IMPHAL, JULY 22: Manipur, the first state in North East which have established an Information Technology (IT) Park is currently have as many as 302 active Common Service Centres(CSC) across its nine districts.
Ukhrul district has the least number of CSCs(6) while Imphal West district has the highest number of CSCs(67). The other hill districts such as Churachandpur has 15,Senapati 16, Chandel has 21 while Tamenglong has 25.On the other hand Imphal East district has as many as 58 while Thoubal and Bishnupur districts have 40 and 55 respectively.
This information was shared by Additional Director of IT Department Nambam Deben.
Earlier speaking to media here on Friday, Commissioner IT Department PK Singh informed that with the centre putting a lot of emphasis on the Act East Policy, Manipur is placed in a very advantageous position to take advantage of the various treaties signed with Myanmar and other ASEAN countries.
“Considering these factors, our department is working on importing electronic components (from China) through Guangzhou-Imphal route (via Myanmar), assembling it in the state and selling the finished product to other states or even exports it outside,” says Additional Director of IT Department Nambam Deben while supplementing the Commissioner’s comment.
The central government encourages the manufacturing and assembling of IT hardwares to curve the foreign exchange as the present IT hardware import of India is said to about 50 billion dollars.
Informing that even though Manipur is a small state as compared to Assam, when it comes to the IT sector, Manipur moved ahead in the region, he said.
“Five IT/IT Enabled Services agencies are operating out of the 2000 sq ft IT Park situated at Mantripukhri near Imphal with about 180 employees,” he added. “Beyond this, the state is about to see first Building of IT Special Economic Zone(1.4 lakh sq ft of space) by March next year as the construction are in final stages.”
Some of the other major initiatives taken up by the department include Establishment of STPI Imphal Centre in 2004 with the facility availed by about 40 IT professionals from the state.
Besides, the department is setting up a number of Common Service Centres (CSC) which will act as the Front End to all online Government Services. The CSCs are Facilitation Centres which are equipped with one or more Computer, printer, scanner etc. and are connected with Internet for providing online Government to Citizens and Business to Citizen Services. Presently about 302 CSCs of which Imphal West district has maximum numbers (67) while Ukhrul has the minimum (6), are active across nine districts, Deben said.
The department is also planning to re-organize and redesign the various websites of the state government departments so that the concerned department can easily update their site with more information, Commissioner PK Singh added. At the same time it also successfully taken up a pilot project on introducing paperless e-office in a few state government departments including DIT Manipur in order to bring greater transparency and accountability, according to Valentina Arambam, Deputy Secretary of IT department.
