Complainant’s Consent Must to Close Complaint, Says GHMC

Hyderabad: As residents accused officials of closing civic complaints without resolving them, the GHMC has made the complainant’s consent mandatory for doing so.

The civic body will tweak the Integrated Grievance Redressal System (IGRS) to ensure that the complainant gets an SMS link, with three options — resolved, not resolved and not attended. The complaint will be closed only after the complainant selects the resolved option. Though a similar module was planned earlier for addressing complaints, it was not implemented effectively.

Officials have noticed complaints raised on Twitter, MyGHMC mobile app and through the landline were closed without resolving the issue. “If the complainant does not close the complaint, it will be assigned to the same officer,” a GHMC official said.

“There will be zone-wise dashboards and the head of the departments will hold the circle-level officials accountable if grievances remain unresolved,” said the GHMC official.

Another mechanism to verify the status of the complaint includes the GHMC staff making a call to the complainant to check for the status.

In many cases, however, people claim that the issue remains unresolved even after an officer was assigned to resolve the complaint and sharing his name and his phone number with the complaint. The most common grievances that remain resolved relate to street lights, illegal constructions, illegal advertisement and dysfunctional washrooms.

According to sources, the complaints are escalated to the officials responsible immediately. However, some officials are seen to be closing the complaints by uploading pictures of the grievance site.

Apart from this, the GHMC had formulated a Comprehensive Road Maintenance Programme (CRMP) for maintenance and restoration of main roads, under which it hired private agencies zone wise giving them exclusive WhatsApp phone numbers, Twitter handles and email ids to report complaints. However, the CRMP grievance redressal system flopped with people unable to reach them.

Speaking about the grievance redressal, the GHMC officials said that only major issues, such as laying of new roads, and the ones that require more time, are not being resolved.

“For instance, people report illegal constructions. However, the property owner brings a stay order from the court. So we cannot take further action,” said the GHMC official.

The sources, however, blamed the ineffective management of GHMC command control room for not addressing complaints. They take complaints but don’t follow up on whether the issue was resolved or not. “People can report their grievances at the weekly Prajavani programme held every Monday at the GHMC head office and at its six zonal offices.”