Elected representatives are accessible and there is always time available for people to meet them. RTI has come handy for the people to know what the executive is doing. It is good but many had to face wrath of unknown persons for filing RTI exposing criminal and executive nexus in our state. There should be room for people to reach out to the officials. Each and every office is barricaded and visitors are not treated well. There should be a proper redressal system . If officials can not meet the people then officials should give official email so that people can inform them about any problem. Complaints loded at the various sites of the central government are attended to but state officials never reply to any of the letter given to them. This has made people distance away from the system. The system exists for the people, they are supposed to serve the people not their masters. The steps taken up at West Bengal is welcome. With an aim to swiftly resolve the problems of the villagers, West Bengal administration recently set up a system called ‘Samadhan’ for redressal of public grievances in Maoist-hit Purulia District.District Magistrate of Purulia, Avanindra Singh, said that this system has been set-up to improve service delivery and to build a cordial relationship between the government and the common man.”Basically, Samadhan is an ICT, which uses informatics for redressal of public grievances , enabled very simple and accessible system, where any person of my district can approach district administration to get grievance resolved and redressed. This is very cheap because it requires only one phone call and there is accountability in the system, nobody can avoid his responsibility because everything is recorded and accounted for. And at the same time, it is basically a tool in the hands of the district administration, especially District magistrate to monitor the performance of public grievance redressal of each and every department,” said Singh.Singh said that a person has to merely dial the helpline number and the details of the complainant and complaint will be noted down and recorded simultaneously and the problem would be addressed at the earliest.Singh further said that the introduction of the system enabled them to be directly in contact with the people.”At the same time, this is helping us in formulation of the scheme, where our political representation is not sufficient or that area is not being properly represented by the political representatives, so public is directly ringing us for demanding different public amenities like good roads or there is only single drinking water source, they are demanding to provide more sources or doctors are not attending the villagers. Such feedbacks we are getting directly from the public and we are getting it verified through our block development officer and we are intervening directly in the problems of those backward or say neglected geographical areas,” said Singh.He further said that after the introduction of the new system, there was a surge in the rise of complaints received by the administration as compared to what they used to receive by post.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/public-grievance-redressal-system/
