Cabinet to sit outside Delhi Secretariat every Saturday to address public grievances.
New Delhi: After opening a helpline to catch the corrupt, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday that his entire Cabinet will now sit outside the Delhi Secretariat every Saturday from 9.30 am to 11 am to address grievances of the “aam aadmi”. If this was not enough, ministers will also take turns to sit outside the secretariat every day to meet people and receive complaints and grievances related to all departments.
Kejriwal said public grievances were nothing but a symptom of some disease as the actual problem was somewhere else. “Some policy made somewhere is affecting us.” He announced that beginning Saturday, he along with his Cabinet colleagues will directly address the grievances of ordinary citizens. “For the rest of the week, our six ministers will take turn every day to hear grievances.”
He said decisions on urgent complaints and grievances will be taken on the spot. “Other complaints would be categorised. The deadline for redressal would be mentioned on each complaint.”
The CM said complaints which that required changes in policy were bound to take more time. He said a separate section had been created to deal with suggestions given by citizens, as simply passing orders would not be enough.
Kejriwal said the existing compliance report system was defective. He said: “We will monitor if grievances have been attended to properly. Our team will send an SMS asking whether the person was satisfied with the government action.
If a person says ‘no’, a team of volunteers will try to figure out the reason for this. Strict action will also be taken against officials who fail to address genuine grievances.”
Asked if officials from the DDA, MCD and Delhi police will also participate in public interactions, Kejriwal said lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung had assured him that all these departments would take action on the grievances referred to them by the Delhi government.
Giving details about the response to the helpline against officials demanding bribes, Kejriwal said on day one 4,500 calls had been received. “We could respond to only 824 calls. Today we had 15 officers handling 30 phones. But we’ll have 30 officers for 60 phone lines from Friday.”
Of 824 calls which were responded to, Kejriwal said 53 complaints were of a serious nature. “Only 38 callers were ready to carry out the sting operation. As many as 15 callers refused to do the sting.”
Kejriwal said some people had already conducted the sting operation. “We have already deployed our teams to catch corrupt officers redhanded.” He said details about the location of the helpline centre was kept secret so that the corrupt are unable to approach the officers handling it directly.
( Source : dc )
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