Ludhiana: 2 ministers conduct surprise check at Sewa Kendra, quizz officials

The ministers also said that in order to ensure transparent services to the people, specially designed boards displaying the facilitation charges will be installed outside all Sewa Kendras from now on.

The ministers said that Ludhiana had 0.42 per cent, pendency rate of ‘send back files’ which was the highest in the state and a matter of concern.

A total of 539000 applications were received in Ludhiana, of which 2276 were pending after the expiration of the stipulated time frame as mentioned under the Right to Service Act. Following this, it was decided to look into the matter and each file was scanned by the government reforms department. Surprisingly, top five officials (responsible for scrutinising these files) with highest “send back pendency” were found to be from Ludhiana.

Hayer said that any kind of harassment to the people will not be tolerated at any cost and added each file was being studied by the government. He said that the Punjab government was working to bring major reforms in the citizen service delivery system by adopting e-governance in its functioning.

While reviewing the working of Sewa Kendra, it was found that the state has 0.9 per cent average of ‘send back’, while the average of Ludhiana alone was 6 per cent. Many unnecessary and unclear objections like ‘call the applicant’, ‘attach mother’s school certificate copy’, ‘cremation slip mismatched’, ‘clear the objection’ (without mentioning what the objection was) were flagged by dealing officials, leading to a lot of harassment to citizens. This also increased the pendency of approval of services.

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Both ministers said that the Punjab government was preparing a roadmap to deliver the  citizen services at the doorsteps of residents so that people didn’t have to stand in queues or make rounds of public offices for availing such facilities.

They said that for ease of public, the Punjab government is preparing a mechanism under which documents for various services would be collected from the applicant’s doorstep and delivered back.