5 mins for birth certificate

Salem:Salem Corporation will speed up the issue of birth and death certificates, thanks to its e-governance initiative.The civic body has started computerising the issue these certificates.After the implementation of the facility, the residents will be able to get these certificates within five minutes, Corporation Commissioner M. Jayaraman said. The Corporation has created a database with records obtained from its offices in the wards and hospitals from 2003. If the residents submit the applications along with the fee, the information will be fed into the database immediately. If the Corporation records and the details in the applications match, the certificates will be issued immediately.

This will eliminate unnecessary delays in the issue of the certificates, the Commissioner said. At present, residents have to wait for more than a day to obtain the certificates after submitting applications.The Corporation officials are not able to process the applications quickly as the manual verification of the records takes a lot of time, civic officials said. Officials further said that the civic body had planned to establish an additional counter at the rainwater harvesting centre in its main office to receive applications and issue birth and death certificates.The Corporation received a large number of applications seeking birth certificate recently, as the schools were demanding it for admissions.

Meanwhile, the Corporation had already implemented computerised tax collection as a part of its e-governance initiative. Steps were being taken up network the banks and enable the residents to remit taxes at the banks.It was also proposed to offer value added services such as payment of telephone bills and electricity charges through the tax collection centres, civic officials said.