JOIN USOnce again leaving behind its bigger and richer brethren - North and South Municipal Corporations - in implementing projects, the East Delhi Municipal Corporation would be giving laptops to all its councillors next month.
If everything goes according to plan, all the 64 councillors in east Delhi would be getting a high-end laptop for official use by the first week of December.
“We have placed orders with HP. The laptops are likely to be delivered by the vendor by the end of this month. We would distribute them by the first week of next month,” said EDMC Commissioner S S Yadav.
The councillors across the three civic bodies (272 put together) have been demanding laptops after trifurcation of the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi in May this year.
The east corporation officials said the machines will also be equipped with several customised applications for e-governance. “The laptops would help the councillors in accessing the corporation websites apart from other e-governance tools. Using some of the applications, they could also monitor work on real time basis,” said a senior corporation official.
However, utility of the laptops for the councillors would remain under scrutiny as several councillors are not very tech-savvy and find it difficult to operate such gadgets.
It was due to their inability to operate such tools that they had demanded the corporation to provide equal number of operators along with the laptops as ‘computer helps’. However, the east municipal corporation has decided not to provide such helps.
“There is no plan of hiring operators for the councillors. Instead, we would conduct few training sessions for the councillors,” said S S Yadav.
While the laptops are being provided to councillors for official use, they are likely to remain with them as the civic body has no plans of taking them back even after the councillor’s term ends.
“The councillors have a term of five years. Technology of such electronic items evolve so fast, that these computers would have no value five years down the line,” said Yadav.