One year after launching the service in 2008, the GHMC officials found that the number of online complaints has gone up substantially.

M Rajeswar Rao, Additional Commissioner, Parks and Information Technology (IT), GHMC told Expresso that the GHMC online grievance cell received over 10,000 of the 27,000 complaints registered in 2009. Most of the complaints related to street lighting and drainage.”

“The GHMC receives about 60 complaints a day and at least 40 per cent of the citizens are utilising the online service to complain on various issues,’’ Rajeswar added.

Giving a break-up of categories of complaints, he said 12,295 complaints were lodged regarding streetlights and 7,671 of them had been attended to by the officials concerned while 4,624 cases were pending for various reasons.

About 2,000 complaints related to drains of which 342 were resolved. Of the 1,862 grievances regarding garbage lifting 736 cases were disposed of.

The GHMC started the unified online Public Grievance Redressal (PGR) system as part of its initiative to improve delivery of services to the people. The PGR helps systematic registration of complaints and tracking of their redressal.

The system structures the various types of complaints and provides better problem analysis besides assignment of grievances to the departments concerned.

The system has a provision to display the number of complaints in each department and ward. A complaint ID number gets generated automatically as acknowledgement of a complaint.

The number helps the complainant monitor the official response.

With the GHMC receiving more complaints through Internet, call centre, CSC and e-Seva, the officials are planning to launch a combined toll-free service soon.