The Indian Express                      22.03.2013

To set house in order, PMC comes up with colour code

Plagued by missing, misplaced and lost files, civic body allots particular colours to different departments so that the files don't get mixed up.

To resolve the frequent complaints of misplaced or lost files that hamper on-time delivery of services to citizens, the Pune Municipal Corporation is shedding the age-old standard brown colour of its files and introducing different colours for the files of different departments.

"The problem of files going missing or getting lost is common with the civic administration. It further gets difficult to search them and all the efforts made in the files get wasted. There are piles of files with each department and every desk has pending files with them," says Executive Engineer Srinivas Kandul. He says a file movement is recorded when it goes from one desk to another, but at times it disappears in transit.

"If the files get misplaced or lost, the administration has no option but to prepare the file once again and start from the beginning by writing to all the departments concerned to submit their documents pertaining to the file," says Kandul.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Rajendra Jagtap had recently instructed the department concerned to chalk out a plan to resolve the issue and try using different colours for files of different departments for easy identification even if they are between piles of files.

Accordingly, the civic administration has decided to allot particular colours to different departments — grey for road department, red for electricity department, green for garden, blue for water and sanitation, yellow for building construction, pink for health and chocolate for solid waste management and vehicle depot departments.

There will be different colours for accounts, local body tax and property tax departments that deal with finances of the civic body. The other departments will also be allotted different shades for their files, says Kandul.

In November 2012, the civic administration had launched a search operation to locate the missing files pertaining to the project to introduce tonga rides in the city as part of its heritage walk programme.

In a communication to all civic departments, the heritage cell asked them to return the file in case they received it by mistake. All departments were also asked to convey to the heritage cell in case they didn't find the file in their departments.

The tonga ride proposal had been approved by the standing committee on July 24, 2012, after which it reached the heritage cell, but the file got misplaced and could not be found till date despite the search.