the goan I network
PORVORIM
A senior citizen who was 15th in the queue had to wait for over 3 hours to have his Deen Dayal Swasthya Seva Yojana (DDSSY) health card renewed in Socorro on Wednesday. This was the plight of several people who were left fuming over the lengthy delay in the renewal process of DDSSY health cards at the Socorro panchayat.
The Goa Electronics Ltd (GEL) had made arrangements in the Socorro Panchayat to renew the DDSSY health cards, but encountered problems in the renewal process. Locals claimed that the fingerprint machine used by GEL would take a very long time to record the fingerprints of the applicants, thereby forcing people, including senior citizens and handicapped person, to wait in the queue for a prolonged period.
“After submitting the DDSSY health card, the GEL staff asks the card holder to place his/her thumb on the fingerprint machine. But the machine does not reflect the thumb impression on the monitor. When repeated attempts fail, the person is then requested to place a second finger on the fingerprint machine. This process goes on sometimes with all 10 fingers. This process consumes a lot of time and people in the queue lose their temper,” remarked a local.
The work to renew the DDSSY health cards was so slow that a senior citizen who visited the Socorro panchayat at 10.10 am to renew his card and was 15th in the queue, got his card renewed only at 1:15 pm.
When The Goan requested a GEL staffer on duty to change the fingerprint machine, she replied that the machine was not faulty but that the online server was slow, thereby causing the delay. But when asked why fingerprints were not promptly reflecting on the computer screen as this process did not need an online server, she remained silent.
Local Suresh Agrawal said people have to apply for leave to renew the DDSSY health card each year. “It is unclear why citizens have to renew their DDSSY health cards every year. It would have been better if the renewal period was for 2-3 years. GEL should give citizens the choice of renewing their health cards once in 2-3 years. Secondly, GEL sends a message to DDSSY card holders to come to Socorro panchayat to renew the card between 10 am and 1 pm. When they visit the Socorro panchayat, they find that cards are renewed till 5 pm. If this was made known to the people earlier, then some people would have come in the afternoon after finishing their work. These simple things would have alleviated the hardships faced by people, especially senior citizens,” said Agrawal.
