A new forum has been opened in Jharkhand to give a push to works of public importance and force procrastinating Government officials into action to deliver timely results. The forum, aptly named Jan Samvaad and inaugurated on Friday by Chief Minister Raghubar Das, will facilitate registration of complaints at a dedicated centre at Ranchi. While opening the communication channel, the Chief Minister had said, "It is the priority of the Government to provide good and transparent governance to the people and the Government is committed to a corruption-free and development-oriented Jharkhand".
The Chief Minister appealed to the people to register complaints, especially corruption cases, on 181, a toll-free number, and assured that action will be taken after verifying the veracity of the complaint and that even the high and mighty will be punished. Das cautioned officials against dereliction of duty. "Human error can be ignored with warning but punitive actions will be taken against those who violate the rules or obstruct work with mala fide intentions. Our Government's views and intentions are clear on this," maintained Chief Minister.
The platform opens a channel of communication with the common public where a person at one end is deputed to receive complaints and interacts with the complainant in their language. The frontline desk of the system answers calls from 24 districts by tele-callers well-versed in the language spoken in a district. Also, a complaint call made is captured through dedicated software that runs on the terminal setup at the centre.
The system comprises one supervisor for every four tele-callers and the job of the supervisor is to segregate complaints based on certain categories which are ultimately sent to the Deputy Commissioners for compliance and a report is also sought on whether the issues raised were resolved. The mechanism to keep corruption under check envisages looking at the matter at four levels beginning from the Director, Information and Public Relations Department (IPRD), then the role of Secretary comes in followed by Principal Secretary and ultimately by the Chief Minister if all means of getting problems addressed come to a naught.
Interestingly, as the Chief Minister sensed the pulse of rural masses and inconvenience to common man due to erring babus, an outside broadcasting van is likely to be rolled out to remove infrastructure constraints and make complaint registration from remote areas possible despite absence of a digital network. "The tender has been floated and it will be finalized in a month. The work will start after that," said Director, IPRD, AK Pandey, adding, "the van will be sent to rural areas for people without telephone connections".