Government to bring all Sakaala services online

The Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DP&AR) on Friday stated that it would bring all the 478 services under Sakaala scheme, online. 

Celebrating the completion of two years of Sakaala, Department’s Principal Secretary Shalini Rajneesh said: “The entire process can be made available online in the next two months. We are approaching all the departments to facilitate the mechanism.”

According to Rajneesh, barring Agriculture, Social Welfare and Energy departments which involved subsidy schemes, all other department services will be available online. “While other services are signatory papers, the three departments of agriculture, social welfare and energy involved primarily subsidy schemes. We may not find officials in these departments catering to services under Sakaala, as they may fear that budgetary allocations may fluctuate for schemes. And if these schemes are not given the budgetary allocation then the officials will be held responsible for delays in the service for no fault of theirs,” she said.

Postal department 

Meanwhile, the DPAR has signed an MoU with the postal department to provide the current online Sakaala services at 500 post offices in the State. In the initial phase, the post offices will provide 55 free services, and later it will be extended to 135 services which are currently available under the scheme.

The MoU states that Sakaala services will be extended to another 1,000 post offices in the State during the next phase. It is said the postal department has a decent broadband service in these 1,500 post offices while the rest lack even a computer. In total, 8,500 post offices will cater to the Sakala services in the next two years. Earlier, giving the inaugural speech, Law Minister T B Jayachandra lauded the Sakaala service and said that it was important to have proper co-ordination between political sphere and bureaucratic sphere to provide able administration.