Bhubaneswar, Jan. 17: The civic body will conduct awareness campaigns to promote e-payments of taxes among and provide 1 per cent cash-back option to taxpayers on each transaction.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation will train its officials to help introduce the public financial management system, an online module developed by the finance ministry. In the second phase, an awareness campaign will be introduced to familiarise the people to the "simple, free and user-friendly system for digital payments", an official said.

"We have received a communication from the state government to nominate officials to be trained in the system. We are planning to bring in measures to switch 100 per cent e-payments of all our income, including collection of taxes and charges, licence fees and others," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

The housing and urban development department has also asked the corporation to switch over to electronic transaction for receipts. Accordingly, the civic body has decided to hold awareness camps, account opening drives, demonstration of e-payment options for shopkeepers through their market organisation.

"While promoting e-payments of taxes among users, it is important to ensure that no additional fees or charges to be levied for the transaction. We are considering to launch a scheme where we will provide 1 per cent cash back for all utility bills paid through digital means to promote e-payments," said a department official.

The civic body has the facility of online payment for holding tax for three of its 67 wards. It also provides the facility of online payment for trade licence to the citizens. "Since the central government is promoting cashless transactions for different kinds of payments, it is our job to implement the same at the ground level," said a civic body official.

He said that even before scrapping of the higher denomination currency notes, the simultaneous cash crunch and the decision to go cashless, the state government had taken many steps to promote e-payments of utility bills. "The state government had already hired a firm to develop the e-payment option. The firm will now do the job in larger manner," said the official.

Citizens, however, have a mixed take on this since many are still unaware of using the digital methods. "It is important to sensitise the people about making digital payments. Such people are high in number who should have been provided demo on making the digital payments. True that digital transactions are hassle free, but it needs to be adopted in proper manner," said Patia resident Somesh Mohanty.