Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) helpline goes slow on addressing ... - Daily News & Analysis

The civic body's decade-old initiative to address citizen's complaints promptly is slackening. In 2000, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) opened a dedicated phone line, where people could call in at any time on 1916 to complain about bad roads, garbage not collected, leak water lines, water contamination, water-logging during monsoon, and other such matters. The facility received an overwhelming response and, according to statistics, was also effective in resolving the complaints. In 2010, about 3,02,000 complaints were registered through the helpline, and more than 99% of these matters were attended to. But for some unexplained reason, that has changed over the past couple of years and in 2012 only 85% of the 1,77,000 complaints registered were attended to. This year, about 76,000 complaints have been registered up to June, but just 67% have been dealt with, according to official figures. "The figures speak for themselves. The idea of the phone line was to help people register their complaints without having to spend much time at the ward offices or in trying to approach a particular department," said a civic official. "It seems that this is not being taken seriously and it is the tax-payer who suffers in the end." Figures for the past couple of months show that of the 62,171 grievances reported in May, 47,135 were attended to, for a response rate of 75.81%. That slipped to only 34.24% in June when 14,107 complaints were registered. The reasons for the slackening are not clear. But when dna drew the attention of municipal commissioner Sitaram Kunte to this, he said, "We will look into it." Rajkumar Sharma of the local citizens' group in Chembur said, "We want timely response. It should fix responsibility on officials. In the case of redressal of online complaints, response must be above 90%." via Business - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNF_f7MTQgltZtVvbtLMzlVDw-uZwg&url=http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/1857644/report-brihanmumbai-municipal-corporation-bmc-helpline-goes-slow-on-addressing-residents-complaints

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