Khammam: The citizen charter in Khammam Municipal Corporation, which had been introduced to deliver services to the public in a time-bound manner and without corruption, is malfunctioning.
KMC, it now appears, had released the citizen charter just as a formality but failed to show the seriousness to make it work well.
No application is being moved in engineering and revenue wings --like revenue, town planning and engineering departments --until the applicant met the concerned officials and satisfied them “by all means.”
It had been promised that Issues relating to sanitation, grant of trade licences, house construction permission and birth and death certificates can be solved or obtained through the citizen charter services. However, citizens are still having a tough time getting such things done.
C Prabhakar, who applied for a nalla connection to his home, said, “I am wandering around the KMC office to get the connection for the past six months. My issue is not settled yet.”
The town-planning department is at the root of much corruption in KMC. Files will not be moved until the applicant, who applied online, went and met the officials. There are middlemen in the department and they will solve the issue after illegally taking money (bribe) from the applicant.
About 217 applications seeking changes in the birth certificates were pending in KMC for the last three months. As per rule, such issues should be settled within 21 days.
The engineering wing received 516 applications for nalla connections. Officials rejected 162 applications and sanctioned only 187 connections. The rest are kept pending.
As for trade licences, no licence will be issued till the applicant personally met the revenue inspector. Instead of repeatedly going to the KMC office and wait for hours there, applicants have the option to pay “some money” and get things done via the backdoor.
In the allocation of house numbers, the officials issued house numbers to 5775 applicants against 6717 requests for the same. Some 80 per cent of these applications were settled after a long time.
Nearly 2517 applications for permissions have been settled by the town-planning department vis-a-vis house construction in the last two years. Eighty per cent of the issues were settled after the applicants met the “demands” from the greedy officials.
N Srinivas in Burhanpuram said, “First, I tried to get the permission on my own. I found it hard to get it. The issue was solved after I approached and paid a bribe through the middleman.”
