by Bhavna Gupta (9810831199)
If late, we have seen many online portals for redressal of public grievances but when you actually sit down and lodge complaints on these portals these are ei-ther not working or the complaints are simply ignored. Whatever I am writing here is on the basis of my personal experience and the experience of other residents which they have shared with me with regard to cases dealing with public grievances.
To begin with, let us take up the MCD portal where after you lodge your complaint, you receive a message about the work having been assigned to the competent authority which then gets reassigned or forwarded and eventually closed without achieving the desired outcome. To give credit where it is due, there is some initial movement in some cases which gets stuck beyond a point of time for reasons best known to the officers. The complaint status on the portal may read like ` joint inspection carried out, permission granted for removal of dangerous tree etc` but no subsequent action is taken in the matter thereafter. In rare cases where action is indeed taken on a complaint, the quality of work is at best shoddy and short of residents` expectations.
Only assigning complaints does not help unless it is solved and addressed to the satisfaction of the complainant. There should be some penalty on the concerned officials if the complaints are not resolved within a stipulated time period. If these departments are so prompt in levying penalties on the public for any violation of law, then why should the same departments not be penalized for their own non-performance? Isn`t failure to discharge their statutory obligations by public servants also not a violation of law? The day our system sets a penalty for negligent officers the way it penalizes the common man, we can definitely expect efficiency in the working of these Departments.
While technology has enabled the Departments to provide a platform for people to raise their grievances, what is the use of providing such a facility when the complaints are not close-looped and are just left to die a natural death?
Let us look at some of the instances of the apathy by the Civic Authorities that have considerably irked us An MTNL Cable Box installed on the W Block road in GK-2 rises above the road level causing risk of accidents on that stretch of road. This matter has been reported to the Authorities several times without any result.
The Forest department asked the public to file offline complaints together with the necessary application and pictures which were duly acknowledged by the Department. Instead of taking any action on these complaints, the Department suddenly wakes up one day to inform people to lodge their complaints afresh online on its portal. This portal fails to work more often than not which piques the complainants no end.
GK-2 and many other areas in south Delhi are besieged with the problem of water seeping in their basements for the past several years. This problem is yet to be resolved in spite of it having been raised in multiple platforms over the years.
When the Horticulture Department fails to prune trees and well-meaning residents do so of their own volition to prevent any likely mishap on account of falling trees, they are fined as if they are criminals. Nobody however as much as even asks the concerned official about their inaction in the matter. What message is being given to the citizens?
As a concerned citizen, I would like to raise some simple questions – Why do we have to run pillar to post to get the Civic Departments to do their job? Why can they not work in an auto mode? Even when citizens raise complaints, why do officials just keep passing the buck without owning up the responsibility to fix the issues? In the same vein, let me pose the following questions to demand better accountability
Why should there be a need to ask for clean roads and backlanes?
Why should there be a need to ask for clean public toilets?
Why should there be a need for asking for clean parks?
Why should the roads be repaired without reminders?
Why should we request for pruning of trees?
Why should we ask for inspection of water logged pits to prevent mosquito breeding?
Are the Civic Bodies not duty bound to regularly carry out all these activities on their own? And, when citizens raise these complaints, why do these fall on deaf ears? What are our rights as concerned and tax paying citizens?
