GHMC call centre is also out of order

Hyderabad: With the GHMC’s call centre server being down for a week, citizens haven’t been able to register complaints on the corporation’s shortcomings.

Mr Phillip Joseph from LB Nagar said, “A drain is overflowing in front of my house, the colony roads are dug up, residents are unable to take out their four-wheelers. On April 17, I had called the call centre number 155304 and registered a complaint, but no one came to inspect our area. I called back on April 19 and the staff said that the server was down for the day and there was no update regarding the complaint. I called on Monday and again on Wednesday. The last time they said that the server was down for a week and they were not registering further complaints. They were rude. When I asked them to pass the call to the team leader, they disconnected my call.”

The call centre, on an average, gets about 500 calls per day. This newspaper tried calling the number five times and each time it was disconnected.

A staffer said, “We are a third party and are not authorised to speak; our job is to take calls and inform the officer… it is the GHMC’s duty to attend to it. There has been a technical glitch since the last few days and the team is working on it… the issue is temporary.”

In 2012, the GHMC had launched the 24x7 call centre for end-to-end grievance redressal. The centre was outsourced to City Managers Training Institute and operates from its premises on Road No 12, Banjara Hills. It has 10 staffers per shift and can take up to 60 concurrent calls. GHMC IT wing authorities did not seem to be aware of the technical glitch.