Day 15: e-Sewa server continues to trouble residents

Charanjit Singh Teja
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, February 14

A technical glitch in the server of e-sewa has caused inconvenience to applicants seeking birth and death certificate at the Municipal Corporation (MC) office here. The server of e-sewa had not been working since January 30.

According to information, more than 1,700 applications are pending for the past 15 days. The sewa kendars have been collecting applications daily but the birth and death certificate wing of the MC is unable to issue the certificate. The applicants visit daily to get their certificates and employees of the certificate wing make false promises to them.

Dharminderjit Singh, in-charge, birth and death certificate wing of the MC, said, “We are helpless as server is not working properly. We can access the applications but can’t download the attachments of supporting documents. Without examining the documents, we can’t issue any certificate. The number of pending applications has been increasing day by day. We are making false promises to the applicants daily”.

The MC officials had written to the Department of Governance Reforms and Public Grievances about the issue last week. Director, Punjab State e-Governance Society, had assured the MC officials that software team had been working on an alternative mechanism to restore the services. However, the department has failed to provide any respite till date.

The students, who applied for the study visa of foreign countries and parents, who are planning to get their children admitted to schools in the upcoming academic session, have been suffering a lot. The delay in issuing of death certificate also led to inconvenience to the descendants of deceased persons.

“I had applied for the birth certificate at Suvidha Centre on January 20. As per the Right to Service Act, the MC should provide the birth certificate within 14 days. Now it’s more than three weeks but the staff is making excuses of technical glitch. I need the certificate for applying the passport”, said Navreet Singh, a visitor at the birth and death certificate wing of the MC.