The online grievance redressal system of the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) has apparently failed to meet its purpose. This facility on the MCD website has not been operating efficiently as desired for nearly eight months.
The last complaint disposed in the online grievance redressal section of MCD was on April 8 this year after which not a single online complaint has been received. When asked, the Mukhya Nagar Adhikari Ashok Kumar replied, "We are already receiving public grievances through our toll free number and the problems are solved on regular basis. The problems in the online system would also be redressed soon," he said while instructing the project implementation unit officials to provide the necessary guidelines to the software company hired to look after the technical part of MCD to resolve the problem at the earliest.Mayor Vinod Chamoli said that he had instructed the officials concerned to check the technical problems and asked them to resolve these soon.
Meanwhile, he also added that public complaints are also redressed through telephones and most of the complaints are resolved by MCD officials. As per the PIU Environment Officer Pankaj Bhatt, the online grievance page was corrupted and had not recovered for about one and a half year. It is still not operational, he said while adding that no complaints had been received online after April this year.
He maintained that the complete system needs to be revived and modified. Some technically sound engineer should be appointed to look after all the technical tasks of the MCD, he said.This online grievance redressal system was initiated on January 1, 2011 and a total of 621 complaints have been registered so far till April, 2013. Talking about the shortcomings of MCD an official wishing anonymity disclosed that regular monitoring is also necessary to remove all the technicalirregularities existing in the MCD.
He added that the staff members are also equally responsible for these irregularities as they don't bother to check the online grievances on regular basis and many times the complaints are even left unchecked.Notably, online grievance redressal system enables a citizen to register complaintsregarding construction of roads, nullahs, sanitation, water logging and many other civic problems sitting at home through the internet.
When it is operating efficiently, people can register their ward complaints in the grievance redressal section by simply adding their contact number, mail address, ward number and the related problems in grievance redressal section of the MCD website. However, the system needs to be repaired and improved.