Tripura government’s special drive to popularise cashless transactions

From A

Correspondent

Agartala, Dec 24 : The Left Front government in Tripura has taken a special initiative to ensure total cashless payments in all government departments and at the same time to popularise cashless transactions in private sectors both in urban and rural areas.

A circular issued from the state secretariat told all the eight district magistrates to launch an awareness campaign among the common people and Rs 5 lakh has been sanctioned to each of them for the purpose.

The district magistrates has already had meetings with the sub-divisiol Magistrates and the Block Development Officers and instructed them to go to each of the villages within their jurisdiction. They have been asked to hold meeting with common people as well as to the business and traders associations to apprise them about the benefits of cashless transactions. They are also organising demonstration about how to make cashless transactions. The government has asked the district magistrates to ensure that at least five shops in every village have Point of Sale machines where people can transact with their ATM cards. Meanwhile the district magistrates are facing a serious problem in procuring necessary quantity of POS machines as the demand for the device has sharply increased throughout the country since the banning of Rs 500 and 1000 notes by the Prime Minister rendra Modi on November 8. However, the state government has told the district magistrate that it has already taken initiative to procure necessary POS machines and it will be supplied as soon as possible. Another problem is most of the villagers don’t have ATM cards and the banks are also finding it difficult to meet the increased demand. Most of the rural areas in Tripura are covered by the Gramin Bank and non-availability of cards with them became the biggest problem.

It may be recalled that the cashless system in government sectors are being practiced for quite a long time as all the salary, pension and different kind of social allowances are being paid directly through the banks.

Now the government has instructed to make remaining areas like payment of electricity bill etc cashless.