And 5 months later, PMC’s citizens’ charter goes bust

But the process has got stuck with departments, already bogged down by paperwork and day-to-day complaints, not sending their compliance reports to the cell. Left in the lurch, the cell has no answer for citizens who regularly make enquiry calls.

The nature of complaints are varied: low water pressure, non-lifting of garbage for more than two days, stray dog menace, health problems, mosquitoes and property disputes. Ironically, while complaints pertaining to building permission and unauthorised constructions top the list, these departments (including the anti-encroachment) are too busy to submit their compliance reports.

Milind Vaishampayan, head of the computer and statistics department of the PMC admitted that the as per the schedule, all the complaints were processed at the cell and then send to the respective departments. But the replies to these are awaited.

The Citizens’ Charter was prepared with the aim of educating people about the civic administration and contained information about the health, water supply, electricity, road, sewerage, traffic, building permission, slum development, tax assessment and other departments. Besides, the charter also mentions how much time the administration would take to complete a particular week.

When contacted, Dr Anil Ravetkar, health department chief, told The Indian Express that complaints were received by various departments and were resolved. However, there was a need to appoint a nodal officer at each department who could coordinate with the cell and process the complaints.

A few other heads of departments said that it was not possible to send compliance reports for each and every complaint. There are hundreds of citizens registering their complaints directly at the department, via the cell or at janata adalats

. It is likely that the complaints are duplicated and most departments prefer not to engage their staff in forwarding their replies to the cell.

C K Patil, public relations officer, said that the issue was discussed at the meeting with the municipal commissioner and other department heads. The department chiefs were directed to cooperate with the cell and provide their feedback.