The Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Limited (KSITIL), the agency implementing the Kerala Fibre Optic Network (KFON) project, will henceforth provide direct access to local bodies to its system for registration of new below the poverty line (BPL) beneficiaries for free Internet connections, as more than 6,000 beneficiaries in the first list provided from local bodies had various details missing, leading to a delay in providing connections to these families, according to KFON officials.
Under the project, 14,000 BPL households, spread across the 140 Assembly constituencies in the State, will get connections in the first phase. However, the service providers were unable to either locate the families due to insufficient address details or register them due to technical issues in 6,877 cases.
In some cases, the beneficiaries had done the registration in the name of their children, while there was spelling mismatch in the names in the official documents and the list provided from the local body. Without accurate details in the Customer Acquisition Form (CAF), the registration will fail during the verification process.
The entire list of untraceable beneficiaries had to be sent back to the Local Self-Government department, which has now sent back the updated list from the respective local bodies. Considering these complications, the KSITIL has decided to open up its business support system to the local bodies so that they can fill the details of each of the beneficiaries from their area. This is expected to reduce the issues that might crop up due to incomplete beneficiary details on lists submitted from local bodies.
Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary recently issued a directive to over 18,000 government offices that have already got KFON connection to start using it as the primary connection. Currently, only 7,000 offices have shifted to KFON completely. The KSITIL plans to take the number of government offices connected to the KFON system to 25,000 by next month.
