The Hindu 17.12.2013
GVMC staff to cough up penalties
Citizen’s charter being implementedfrom December. 1
With grievances from public increasing over issue of several certificates, the emphasis on implementation of citizen’s charter has increased.
With the prospect of having to pay fine from their pocket in case of delay in issuing certificates in the prescribed time, employees of various wings are waking up to the immediacy of the task. A total of 48 civic services come under the charter.
They had a taste of what lay in store for them in November. For not meeting the deadline, the fine ran up to Rs.7 lakh towards 1,697 applications that were not addressed on time. Of them, the majority were from Public Health Department, relating to issue of birth and death certificates. Shocked by the development, employees said they had been pending for sometime and had blamed it on the Samaikyandhra agitation leading to the piling up of applications. “Since it is the initial period of the renewed implementation, their plea was accepted,” said an official.
It was decided that the citizen’s charter will be implemented from December 1 and the fine will be collected from the employees concerned for not readying it or from the official if it gets delayed.
In December as of Monday, a fine of Rs.66,800 is accumulated against the applications. Of the 421 applications received 292 were disposed of after the due date and another 129 still remain to be issued.
Going by the status of Citizen Charter Monitoring System, not even a single certificate was issued by the due date. For the 292 applications, the fine was Rs.32,500.
Principal Secretary, Municipal Administration and Urban Development, and Special Officer of GVMC S. K. Joshi is firm that the charter should be implemented without any deviation as it will reduce the number of grievances with people having to represent several times.
