GHMC Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu on Monday called for streamlining the functioning of the town planning, health & sanitation and the engineering wings so that better civic services could be provided to the citizens.
Launching the ‘Praja Vani’ (People’s Voice) programme at the head office where citizens with grievances can directly interact with the Commissioner and other senior officers every Monday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Mr. Krishna Babu said most complaints received in person or through the 24-hour call centre pertained to these departments.
Requesting citizens to make use of the latest facility, he said the first stage should be to complain at the zone/circle levels before coming to the head office as Zonal Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners would be available at the respective zone and circle offices at the same time to receive grievances.
During the programme, the head office received 20-odd complaints while the zonal/circle offices received 104 more.
“Every complaint is being computerised and a receipt is generated with a number. A weekly review will be held to check for the solutions provided and explanations when the problem could not be solved.”
Explaining the rationale behind the programme, Mr. Krishna Babu said citizens were unable to meet officials because of various meetings being held throughout the week hence it was decided to earmark a specific period of time for the citizens. Senior officials in the Secretariat and other government departments would also be urged not to slot any meetings during the period.
Ever since the call centre became functional from this January, about 4,104 complaints were received and 2,794 were disposed of registering a success percentage of 68. Pendency of complaints was 1,310 and 698 of them were outside the purview of the citizen’s charter, said Mr. Krishna Babu.
Grievances about abnormal increase of property tax (30 pending), garbage lifting (248), engineering works (600) like road works, storm water drains besides town planning (165) about encroachments and unauthorised constructions plus street lighting were received.
The Commissioner also said that efforts were on to professionalise the transport wing and the services of a motor vehicles inspector was requisitioned to ensure that fitness tests were conducted for the vehicles regularly. Additional Commissioners -- K. Dhananjaya Reddy (Planning), L. Vandan Kumar (Health & Sanitation), D. Jayaraj Kennedy (Advertisements) and others were present.
