Praja Foundation report: Under BMC, delays in addressing complaints, Right to Services Act ‘not implemented’

The report on the working of ward committees and civic problems was prepared on the basis of data of citizens’ complaints received from the civic body’s Central Complaint Registration System (CCRS) and accessed through the RTI law. The complaints were about roads, solid-waste management, drainage, water supply and others.

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In 2015, the highest number of complaints (13,601) were registered about roads. This was followed by drainage with around 9,904 complaints and water supply with 7,728 complaints. However, the report showed that there was a steep decline in complaints related to roads from 2013 to 2015. In 2013, around 42,287 complaints related to roads were registered.

Apart from this, the report also threw light on the total number of pending questions raised by corporators through point of orders during the general body meetings.

These pending question have risen five-fold in the last four years. From 2012 to 2015, the total number of pending questions increased from 327 to 1,530. The average number of days taken to provide an answer to these questions over the last four years is 128 days.

Shockingly, the civic administration took over 1,000 days to provide answers to five specific questions raised in ward committee meetings.

Four of these were from the F/South (Parel) and F/North (Matunga, Sion) ward committees. The issues raised were related to illegal construction, potholes and garbage.

Meanwhile, two corporators — Ujjwala Modak of BJP from Andheri(E) and Jyotsna Parmar of Samajwadi Party from Mahim-Dharavi — did not ask a single question in ward committee meetings over the last four years.

In 2015, 27 corporators did not ask a single question in ward committee meetings. On an average, 91 per cent corporators have asked less than 10 questions in ward committee meetings over the last four years.

Milind Mhaske, Project Director at Praja, said the report was a reflection of the civic administration’s inefficiency in resolving these issues.

“To bring any concrete change, the administration should become proactive. This is a serious issue in BMC administration and needs to be dealt with urgently. Else, we will essentially be faced with a situation with non-functioning of decentralised powers towards poorly governing city,” Mhaske said.

“We have the system to resolve the complaints of people but what about the time it takes to do so? What is the point of having all new technology, manpower and money if we are not able to address these important issues on time,” asked Mhaske.

Nitai Mehta, Founder and Managing Trustee of Praja, said the civic body has enough resources to resolve these civic issues.

“The emphasis of the city’s custodians on replacing, recreating and reacting, rather improving and evolving at the core, is the crux of the problem. We have enough in our hands but we are unaware of how to use it. Administration should work on how to use the existing schemes and technology effectively with the minimum response time,” said Mehta.

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