DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Following the commitment of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to provide easy, transparent and hassle-free services to the people of the state, special efforts were made by the Governance Reforms Department to improve the lives of the people through service centers. Last year 2022 started with new initiatives to provide better civic services to the people. During the 'Good Governance Week' celebrated in the last month of the year, Punjab was one of the first three states in the country where more civic services were provided to the people. Governance Reforms Minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer mentioned the unique efforts of the department and said that 128 new services have been started in the seva kendras. For the convenience of the people, the hours of the service centers have been extended and it has also been decided to open the office on weekend days. Besides, people have also started getting digitally signed certificates through mobile, which benefited 7.5 lakh people. Now, the common man will not have to visit the office again for a new certificate due to getting a hologram certificate. Apart from this, no form filling facility for seven services in Seva Kendras was initiated too. The citizen will go to the nearest service center with only the original required documents, where the operator of the service center will fill out the entire form in the online system after checking the original documents. As many as 25,263 people benefited from this facility. In the first phase, the services related to income certificate, rural area certificate, name addition to a birth certificate, income and asset certificate, general caste certificate and senior citizen identity card were introduced. Continuous monitoring of the functioning of the Seva Kendras and field visits by the Governance Reforms Minister resulted in reduction in the number of pending cases in the Seva Kendras. In the month of March, 1.49 percent of the cases were pending, which remained at only 0.40 per cent in the month of Dec. (editor@dailyworld.in)