BMC goes online to deal with public grievances
BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now switched to an online grievance redressal system as the manual practice has been discontinued since the outbreak of the pandemic.
The BMC had launched a portal called Bhubaneswar One in 2018 to receive grievances from the citizens online, but the manually practice was more popular. Now, all the complaints made on the toll free number 18003450061 automatically get registered on the online portal so that the personnel monitoring it can see the pending and resolved complaints. On an average, the civic body receives 80 complaints on a daily basis.
According to the BMC data from 2018 till December 2020 (first week), it had received 18,898 complaints of which 16,188 were resolved. Of them, 2,710 complaints are pending. The maximum complaints (312) were received in the north zone of the BMC. Of them, 235 have been resolved.
Most online complaints were relating to street light issues (10627 complaints) followed by sanitation (4236), Sewage (720) and stray cattle menace (586). The other complaints included drainage, construction and demolition waste, drinking water, faecal sludge and septage management, environmental and electrical.
BMC deputy commissioner (grievance) Gayatri Samantray said there were no pending complaints relating to the faecal sludge management. “Stray dog, vow and bull menace related complaints are resolved immediately. So far, only six such complaints are pending. People have registered grievances over garbage lifting and littering. We have been able to solve 98 per cent of them,” she added.
BMC officials said the online platform was helping the respective departments to view complaints and delegate work to the field workers so that they get resolved without a delay. The daily compliance report is also filed by the field personnel which is later tabled before higher officials for analysis.
BMC officials said the grievances received through calls on the toll free number get recorded on the online platform and are directly merged with the complaints received on the platform. Citizens get an acknowledgement message on their number soon.