The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has announced a New Year gift to the citizens of the capital in the form of a 24 hour call centre to take in grievances of civic issues and also make the officials concerned accountable to solve them.
The call centre with the number 155304 being run by a private professional agency will become operational from midnight and is accessible from all mobile and landlines irrespective of the service provider, said Mayor Mohd. Majid Hussain, and Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu at the year-end press conference on Monday.
Trial runs were held for the last six months before the service is opened, they said, pointing out that a complaint number will be issued through Short Message Servie (SMS) to the caller and the grievance will be forwarded to the official concerned through another SMS.
If the grievance is not redressed within the given time frame it will be scaled up to the next-level.
Close scrutiny
“I and the Commissioner will be closely monitoring the functioning of the call centre. We will also reconfirm from the complainant if the grievance has been redressed to his or her satisfaction,” said Mr. Majid Hussain.
The call centre is equipped to deal up to 4,000 complaints daily and depending on the calls generated it will be strengthened further.
The Mayor also stated that the municipal corporation was now comfortably positioned to take up many civic works having overcome the bank overdraft issue.
The revenue collection too was quite sizeable because of the efforts to plug loopholes in different wings whether in property tax collection, trade license renewal and others.
“We have not been able to match the expectations of the citizens this year, but next year I can assure you about finding a difference in each and every department.
We will make the citizens feel they are living in a global city,” he said. Up to Rs.100 crore is scheduled to be spent in each of the five zones.
Bio-diversity summit
“The central and west zones were refurbished for the bio-diversity summit.
“The same impact will be made in the other zones too in improving the main roads, footpaths, drains, etc. this year,” he affirmed.
