Mir Farhat
SRINAGAR, July 27: As the Assembly elections draw close and ruling parties gear up for the campaigning, the grievances of lack of basic amenities to people in the State have been mounting.
The grievance cell of the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah at Civil Secretariat which he launched in 2009 for quick redressal of the problems faced by the public in daily life has seen an increase in their number during the past many months.
With the Assembly elections just months away, the public representatives have began focusing on how to win elections and people say the grievance redressal by their representatives have taken a hit.
The ruling coalition parties, National Conference and Congress, which in view of the forthcoming elections have begun focusing on to woo the people by announcing “populist measures”, but at the same time have given a go by to the routine public affairs.
MLA from the constituencies have also directed their workers to mobilize the people for campaigning and neglected to address problems of daily life faced by public.
The CM’s grievance cell has received over 50,000 complaints in the last over five years out of which the official monitoring them have entertained only 25789 while rest were either found “un-authentic or lacked information about the complaint”.
Large percentage of these complaints was against the departments like Power Development Department (PDD), Health, Public Health Engineering (PHE), which indicates people lack basic amenities.
Ram Sevak, Additional Secretary to CM grievance cell, told Excelsior 24,522 complaints have been disposed off and 1267 are pending. He said the cell is an effective way to address the complaints of the people.
“After people lodge their complaints of lacking daily amenities, our teams monitor them for authenticity. Verified grievances are dispatched to the concerned departments. A swift and serious result is found because the departments cannot ignore them as they are from CM’s office and they have to reply to the complaint,” Sevak said.
The complaints are being received in the cell either by hand, mail or toll free telephone numbers.
Complaints of non-availability and shortage of ration like sugar, rice from Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution outlets, damaged roads, lanes, and by-lanes in rural and urban areas of the state flood the cell.
People have not stopped here. Complaints of fund embezzlement by officials in Government departments, encroachment at the tourist destinations, including Pahalgam have been shot to the CM through the cell.
The cell also receives complaints against the security personnel, private schools hiking fees, embezzlement in MGNREGA schemes etc.
Sevak said the complaints received are verified telephonically from the complainants and then forwarded to the concerned departments for their disposal as per the rules, regulations in vogue.
“The complainant is telephonically informed of the action taken by the grievance cell in respect of his complaint. These complaints are regularly followed up with the concerned Departments on weekly basis,” Sevak said, claiming 95 percent of the complaints received since 2009 have been disposed off.
In case of lack of action, repeated reminders are shot to the higher ups of departments and those officials failing to address the complaints are summoned to the Chief Secretary’s office to seek immediate redressal, he said.
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