Port Blair, Mar 04: The Islands Chief Secretary, Mr. Shakti Sinha informed that the much needed submerged optical fibre cable project for the islands has been finalized and will be started soon. Interacting with the national media team at his chambers on Thursday, the Chief Secretary said such mega project of laying under sea cable lines between Chennai and Singapore to solve the communication connectivity problems in the islands is being implemented by the government for the first time in the entire country.
Briefing on the project, he said the administration received tenders from reputed international firms and the selected firm will under take the work, besides maintenance of the cables for 15 years. He said the cable line will provide bandwidth of minimum 10 GB and thereby solving the communication problems in the islands. The submerged cable line will connect 9 major islands in the region and thereby extending high bandwidth communication links across the islands. He is also hopeful once the project is completed, it will pave way for setting up of the I T industry in the islands in a large scale, as the region enjoys highly congenial atmosphere with rich human resources for it. The project is expected to be completed in the next two years.
He said the national e governance programme implemented in the islands will be further strengthened thereafter. He said the common service centres established in the islands function effectively and more services will be added to the centres gradually. Regarding tourism promotion in the islands, he said for the first time in the country Canopy walk ways will be constructed in the islands to offer panoramic view of Chidiya Tapu and Mount Harriat and thereby attracting more tourists. He said there was certain delay in starting the project in Chidiya Tapu due to certain modifications proposed in its design. He also revealed that the region has lot of potentials for luxury cruise tourism and the administration will extend necessary support for the ventures on cruise tourism.
Earlier, the media team interacted with the Secretary of Information Technology, B S Bhalla. Briefing on the e governance programme in the islands, he said the department of information Technology has almost completed the computerization of land records in the entire group of islands. He said the next level of digitizing the maps of the entire region is being planned and started soon. He revealed that soon after the completion of computerization of land records, the data will be made available on line and the public will be able to see the data about their land holding at the comfort of their homes. Besides, the administration also planned to set up Information kiosks in important places to enable the people to view the required data on line.
He further informed that the land record data will be given to the common service centres and the people can approach the centre to get a copy of their land record without approaching the Patwaris of their areas. He is hopeful that the strengthening of the CSCs will go a long way in extending all the government services to the people in hassle free manner in their own locations and thereby avoiding the need to visit government offices or approach the government servants for such services.
The Media team also visited many common service centres known as e dweep kendras at Port Blair to review their activities. The media team also visited Havelock Island by seaplane on Saturday. The team is scheduled to leave from Port Blair on 5th of this month (PIB).
