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The Common Services Centers of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology has partnered with PayPal to offer immediate Covid relief facilities and drive awareness campaigns regarding prevention and care against the Covid-19 pandemic in rural India.

PayPal will support the CSC Academy, CSR wing of CSC, in setting up PSA oxygen plants in five hospitals in four States - one each in Bengaluru (Karnataka), Chennai (TN) and Jaunpur (UP) and two in Patna (Bihar). These plants will be fully automated, designed to work unattended with minimum start-up time to generate oxygen with the desired purity within minutes.

Mobile vans, sponsored by PayPal, will create awareness and provide services like antigen testing, registration for vaccination, basic Covid medicine kits and essential provisions in Karnataka, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

The Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) of CSC will manage these vans and help those without a smartphone to register for vaccination. They will also provide antigen testing and basic COVID-19 care medicine kits. The vans will also be equipped with oxygen cylinders to be used in emergency and give citizens access to tele-medicine consultation with doctors through CSC. Besides this, the vans will be equipped with cash withdrawal facility through DigiPay and supply essential provisions to citizens through CSC Grameen eStore at their doorstep.

PayPal will also support CSC Academy in training 50,000 VLEs, including 40,000 women VLEs, as Covid Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) Ambassadors to raise awareness about preventive measures against COVID-19.

Nath Parameshwaran, Director, Corporate Affairs, PayPal India said, "PayPal firmly stands with the Indian Government to help them in their efforts towards fighting this pandemic. We have been working closely with Meity & CSC on several initiatives over the years. We have now extended this partnership to promote COVID appropriate behaviour, availability of medical facilities and expansion of the vaccination drive across Tier II cities. One of the key highlights of this partnership is to assist citizens with no access to smartphones to register and avail the vaccine through CSC's village level entrepreneur network. The vaccination expansion will play a critical role in helping India fight the pandemic."

Guru Bhat, VP, Customer Success Platform, PayPal said, "We have partnered with CSC SPV and CSC Academy to provide medical facilities, drive awareness about preventive methods, and inculcate COVID appropriate behaviour amongst the rural population. Our partnership will broaden the reach of the awareness drive and help provide necessary support to those impacted by the crisis."

Elaborating on the partnership, MD, CSC SPV, Dinesh Tyagi said, "This partnership with PayPal will enable a deeper outreach in rural areas with immediate COVID relief measures like antigen testing, registration for vaccination, access to medicine kits, cash withdrawal and supply of essential provisions at their doorsteps. It will also help us sustain a COVID Appropriate Behaviour awareness campaign in rural communities to stop the spread of COVID-19 virus. CSC telemedicine platform can support citizens in getting advice from doctors to deal with this pandemic. Even after testing negative, Covid patients can get support through telemedicine."

The Common Services Centers is one of the flagship programmes under the Digital India Programme. CSCs offer assisted access to essential government and public utility services, social welfare schemes, financial services, education and skill development courses, apart from a host of B2C services.There are 4 lakh plus CSCs functioning across the country as delivery points of government and public services for the rural population in rural, semi-urban and urban areas.