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.