MCGM Partners With Sify Technologies

Sify Technologies, a player in the consumer Internet and enterprise services space, has entered into a partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the country’s largest municipal corporation.

This partnership will enable MCGM to leverage Sify’s ePort cyber café chain in Mumbai to provide online services to Mumbai’s citizens including:

-Payment of water tax and property tax,
-Renewing shop and establishment licences,
-Applying for birth and death certificates,
-Applying for health licences,
-Registering complaints and tracking the status of complaints

Mumbai’s citizens can now visit any of the 250 ePort cafés in the city to access these facilities online. The city’s ePorts will function as civic service centres for the MCGM, so citizens need not have a Sify account for availing these services.

Naresh Ajwani, president-Consumer Infrastructure and Operations, Sify Technologies, said, “This partnership is aimed at making the lives of the citizens of greater Mumbai easier with convenient access to online services from a nearby ePort. This is a reiteration of the trust reposed in us by the public and public institutions such as MCGM. We hope this will be the first of many such partnerships to improve the lives of the citizens of the country.”

“The advantages of such a partnership are many, and accrue to all stakeholders-the MCGM, citizens, the cyber café industry and business and industry. For the MCGM, access to their services online will be available round the clock and all seven days of the week; citizens will not have to travel to the corporation office, nor will they have to wait in long queues anymore; the cyber café industry will be perceived to be an enabler of convenient online access to multiple services making the Internet available for all; and business and industry will benefit from increased productivity as staff need no longer take time off to complete such chores. Such partnerships are therefore a winning proposition for everyone concerned, and we are very happy to be pioneering such a model,” he added.

Citizens need only follow a simple 4 step procedure to access MCGM’s services:

- Carry the bill or reference number to the Sify ePort
- The café host logs on to the MCGM website at www.mcgm.gov and confirms the bill/ name/ amount
- The café host accepts the money and pays online on behalf of the citizen
- The citizen is given a print out of the receipt

So citizens need not be familiar with computers or using the Internet to use MCGM’s online services.