Standing Committee of civic body approves proposal for purchasing 10 different types of paper worth Rs 31.16 crore for the next year
According to the proposal, papers will mainly be used by the municipal printing press which supplies all sorts of papers and documents for civic departments and Octroi offices
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While the Prime Minister is inching closer to a digital India, the BMC still wants things to remain on paper instead.
The country’s richest civic body is going to spend R31. 16 crore on purchasing paper for the next year.
The move came about even though the civic body has embraced online transactions for payments, applications, registration and renewal in several departments and spent crores on digitising its functioning.
Committee approves
On Tuesday, the proposal of purchasing 41.80 lakh kg of 10 different types of papers for 2017-18 was cleared in the Standing Committee’s meeting.
According to the proposal, papers will mainly be used by the municipal printing press — which supplies all sorts of papers and documents for civic departments — and Octroi offices.
Papers will be used for...
Papers like the 12.90 lakh kg maplitho papers — used for office application — for the municipal printing press, 25.50 kg copier papers (A4 size), 1.5 lakh kg of art paper/cards will be purchased.
A senior civic official said, “These papers will be mostly used for printing agendas for meetings of committees like the general body, Standing Committee, improvement and ward. Office files, documents, reports, proposals, bills, hospital case papers, school books are the other things the papers are used for.” The meeting agenda papers are distributed to 232 corporators in the BMC.
Crores for digitisation
However, in 2012, BMC had spent R8 crore for purchasing laptops for the corporators in order to make the distribution paperless. Apart from this, it also foots their mobile phone bills. Other than this, it has also spent R6 crore on a software called the Public Representative Information System (PRIS) to enable citizens to register civic complaints online. But despite spending so much money on it, the system still has glitches.
BMC says
Kishor Surti, general manager of the municipal printing press said, “It will take some time to transition from paper to electronic format. Demand for papers has also increased since printing of advertising material has increased. The documents in papers will be kept as back up in case of malfunction happening to the computers.”
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