Hyderabad: Notwithstanding the long-pending complaints and queries, officials from Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and district collectorates of Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Sangareddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri have failed to redress public grievances in a time-bound manner.
Prajavani, a programme conducted every Monday at all offices to redress citizens’ grievances, has been abandoned ostensibly because of ‘non-availability’ of officials and due to Covid-19 restrictions since March 2020.
Despite having a mechanism to resolve issues on digital platforms like the GHMC app, an online grievance redressal system, Twitter, and a helpline, the civic body has failed to rise to people’s expectations, largely because of the apathy of field staff. Ironically, the citizen’s charter that was placed prominently in its head office has since been replaced with a vertical garden.
A sad commentary is that some complaints are being closed even without them being addressed in right earnest. The GHMC has earned enough notoriety on this count.
In what comes as a shocker, almost 12,007 of 39,687 complaints, lodged between January 1 and April 16 this year, are pending while 1,201 complaints are ‘under process’.
The Prajavani programme was last held at their head office in June 2019, long before the pandemic had struck. Barring the odd sessions held in very few zonal offices in the fag-end of 2019, the programme was completely abandoned to the dismay of the citizens.
Tamim Ahmed, a resident of Bandlaguda in Chandrayangutta, said, “We are suffering due to non-functional street lights in our area. My complaint in this regard still hangs in the balance.”
Vexed with the attitude of GHMC staff, some residents are approaching their local corporators hoping for speedier solutions, it is learnt.
“It is high time the Prajavani programme is revived,” said B.T. Srinivasan, general secretary of the United Federation of Resident Welfare Associations.
