The Union Information and Service Centres (UISC) set up at remote places in Cox’s Bazar are becoming popular among locals as the UISC’s have been providing praiseworthy services.
Each day, a large number of locals visiting the 71 UISC’s located at each union of the district to benefit from the services the outlets offer to the people.
Through the use of ICT, the centres provide a wide variety of useful services including filling up birth registration, passport, and other government forms, printing, computer composing, laminating, banking services and processing electricity bills.
The Dhaka Tribune’s Cox’s Bazar correspondent recently visited Holdia Palong Union Parishad, a service centre located near Moricchya Bazar at Ukhiya upazila, where he found many locals thronging the outlet to meet their needs.
Khotija Begum, a mother of three children, who came from Patabari to obtain birth registration certificates expressed her satisfaction with the services the centre provided.
She said: “The service is cost-effective. It costs me Tk90 for printing and laminating three birth registration cards from here, but if I had to do it from any other private business store of the nearby market, probably it would cost Tk150 for the same service.”
Dipa Nita Barua, wife of a Bangladeshi expatriate, was in need of a UP chairman-signed nationality certificate and a police verification report within a short time to start the procedure of becoming an Italian citizen.
She arrived at the UISC in the morning on October 10 and after completing her works for the day while she was coming out from the outlet, Dipa said the staff of the centre helped her earnestly to complete the procedure with in a very short time.
With a very satisfactory smile Dipa added that she also managed to talk and see her husband Sajal Barua through skype from the centre’s computer.
Four local entrepreneurs Abdur Rahman, Momena Begum, Shafiul Alam and Halima Begum have been operating the centre dawn-to-dusk and bringing various types of information to the locals’ doorstep.
Chief entrepreneur Abdur Rahman said Cox’s Bazar district administration had launched the centre on November 11, 2010.
He said they opened a computer training centre at this USIC to help village students to learn about computer and internet basics. Currently the centre has 15 students.
A number of students of the computer centre mentioned that the training has helped them a lot to increase their confidence to get a job or to start a business.
Kamal Uddin Mintu, chairman of Holdia Palong Union Parishad, said the pace of work at his union parishad increased manifold ever since the USIC had been launched.
Md Ruhul Amin, deputy commissioner of Cox’s Bazar, said residents of 71 unions across the district derive benefits from the services provided by Union Information and Service Centres.
Ruhul added that: “Since there is no electricity connection in Saint Martin, we are facing some difficulties to provide the services in the unions.”
But still they are continuing their efforts to overcome the problems, he said.
Union Information and Services Centres (UISC) is one-stop service outlets operating at Union Parishads of the country.
Through use of ICT, UISC is able to bring various types of information related to government, livelihood and private services to the doorstep of citizens in rural areas.
It ensures services providers and users to save time, cost and has made operations hassle free.
Operating under the Public-Private-Peoples’ Partnership (PPPP) modality, these centers are run by local entrepreneurs, hosted by UPs and supported by central administration.
