In spite of popular demand for resuming the practice of Open House sessions by various departments during Vigilance Awareness Week to provide a forum for the public to air vigilance-related grievances, the Government is not in favour of the idea.
“We already have effective grievance redressal channels so it would be redundant to organise open house events,” Chief Secretary Manoj Parida said.
Apart from a 100 per cent RTI compliance in the UT, the other mechanisms for citizens included petitioning the office of the Lt. Governor, Vigilance Officers in Government Departments, or if the complaint pertained to an irregularity in higher education, lodging a complaint with the newly-constituted Permanent Admission committee chairman headed by a former Madras High Court judge, Mr. Parida pointed out.
Apart from these locally accessible channels, citizens also resort to petitioning the PMO and Home Affairs Ministry.
There have been calls from various quarters for resuming the open house sessions. While such sessions in the past had been successful in bringing out irregularities, one of the main reasons they were discontinued was because a section of aggrieved citizens turned the forum into a witch-hunt against some officials. A way out, as suggested by People’s Pulse, a civil society organisation, was to restart the exercise with a code of conduct for all attendees.
“On an average, we deal with less than 100 complaints a month which is a relatively small number,” he said.
The Union Territory being under close watch of the CBI unit stationed in Chennai is an important deterrent.
The Chief Secretary counts as among creditable achievements, the recent completion of several recruitments, including the appointment of about 300 police constables, without controversy.
“There has also been no complaint about favouritism in the roll out of the Government’s freebie schemes,” he added.
Earlier, Mr. Parida administered the Anti Corruption Pledge to officials of the Chief Secretariat to launch Vigilance Awareness Week (October 26-31).
Government secretaries, officers and staff pledged to fight corruption.
