The Hindu 07.04.2013
Grievance redress system: civic body flooded with messages
City residents can send complaint as SMS to 92822 02422.
On Thursday, after reading in newspapers that the
Coimbatore Corporation had launched a short message service (SMS)-based
grievance redress system, Maniakarampalayam resident S. Nallasivam sent a
message to 92822 02422.
He had mentioned his ward number, area and the street name to say that the light at the lamp post near his house was faulty.
The
Coimbatore Corporation, which received the message, forwarded the same
to the to the ward engineer concerned. The engineer by Friday morning
had attended to the complaint.
Kannappan Salai Third Street resident D. Nandhakumar sent a message on Friday morning to the Coimbatore Corporation.
His grievance had to do with sewage stagnation in his area, which was a part of Ward 100.
The
Corporation forwarded his message to the ward engineer concerned, who
had attended to the complaint within a couple of hours by sending a
lorry to pump out the drainage and clean the locality.
The
two are among the hundreds of complaints the Corporation has started
attending to on a priority basis after Mayor S.M. Velusamy and
Commissioner G. Latha launched the SMS-based grievance system on Tuesday
last.
Good response
Ms.
Latha said that the response had been so good that the civic body was
flooded with messages. By Friday afternoon her count stood at a little
over 1,000 messages.
The Corporation had evolved a
mechanism wherein it treated every complaint it received as a file. The
information technology or the Information Centre personnel handling
SMS-based grievance redress system forwarded the SMSes to the officials
as e-mails. The engineers would act on them and then post updates.
If
the engineers or sanitary officers or officials had redressed the
grievances, the Corporation would close the files and the staff handling
grievance redress system would send the completion messages to the
complainants.
If not, the Corporation would keep open
the files but send to the senders the status updates on what action the
officers had initiated.
Commissioner Ms. Latha said
that the civic body was still fine tuning the redress system in that it
was attempting automation at every level and that senior officials were
able to monitor the mechanism.
The officials would
immediately redress those complaints that could be easily attended to.
For those that involved planning or budgeting, they would initiate the
process at the earliest.
Objective
The objective behind the purpose was to assure the people that the Corporation was responsive to their grievances.
Resident
Mr. Nallasivam said that by launching the services, residents like him
were relieved in that they could just send the message and wait for the
work to be completed, without having to worry about issues like to who
to contact to get the grievance redressed and going to the civic body.
