Common Services Centres, PayPal partner to fight against Covid-19 in rural India

The Common Services Centres (CSCs) of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has partnered with digital payments provider PayPal to offer Covid-relief facilities and drive awareness campaigns regarding prevention and care against the pandemic in rural India.

PayPal will support the CSC Academy, the CSR wing of CSC, in setting up PSA oxygen plants in five hospitals in four states -- one each in Bengaluru (Karnataka), Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh) and two in Patna (Bihar).

These plants will be fully automated and 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.

One of the key highlights of this partnership is to assist citizens with no access to smart phones to register and avail the vaccine through CSC's village level entrepreneur network, said Nath Parameshwaran, Director of Corporate Affairs at PayPal India.

"The vaccination expansion will play a critical role in helping India fight the pandemic," he said.

( With inputs from ANI )