Desperate citizens battle it out at chaotic CFC

Welcome to the Citizen Facilitation Centre (CFC) of the district collectorate,located in the vicinity of the Pune railway station. But it is not exactly the place where would be welcome,these days. Absolute chaos prevails through the day at the CFC. It’s got a mela-like look with every inch of the space being grabbed by citizens coming from all parts of Pune. The crowd is a mix of parents and youngsters,each of them desperately waiting for their turn to either submit the application or get their income certificate,caste certificate,domicile certificate.

The jamming of the CFC apparently begins at 5 in the morning. “I came here from around 7 in the morning. Well before that a queue of a hundred was already in place,” says Yeshwant P of Dehugaon. “I was here at six in the morning. There were some people already queued up ,” says Kondiba Kokare of Kanhu village in Velha taluka.

If you enter the CFC premises,you will struggle to find place to put your feet. As you head towards different “windows,” you will bump into a maze of crowd jostling and pushing to keep ahead of others. Finding one queue is a task in itself. At every window,the clusters of crowd are palpable. In the “distribution centre,” one fan is whirring,while others standstill. In the main hall,tired citizens sprawl on the floor,some take a breather against the wall. There are screams and a sigh of relief everytime a name is called out. Some wait for applications to submit,some for getting certificates and others for receiving tokens. The harried citizen have loads of questions to ask: “Can there be some discipline in these queues? Can we get our certificate in quicker time? Do the district collectorate officials really work? Is there anything called system here?” Some of the citizens fear the worst. “What if a stampede occurs here? Do the district officials know the kind of havoc that will be caused here?,” asks Srirang Jadhav,a resident of Bibvewadi.

The district collectorate officials have answers none would buy. “We are demanding extra and dedicated staff for this purpose. Currently,we have to summon staff from other departments for this task. The work in those department suffers,” says resident deputy collector Prakash Kadam.

Kadam says the current chaos at the CFC is temporary. “It is because of the class XI admissions. Once this is over,the crowd will thin out. The collectorate officials have been closely monitoring the CFC working. We have worked even on Saturdays and Sundays. In a day,we have issued over 4000 certificates.”

Kadam says the collectorate has a CFC in Pimpri-Chinchwad,but since people are in a hurry to get their certificates,they rush to Pune.