Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday urged the District Collectors to take “bold decisions” for the benefit of the people, and the State administration would back them in this regard.
Speaking at the concluding session of the three-day Collectors’ Workshop at the State Secretariat here, Patnaik lauded the efforts of Collectors in providing houses for rural poor and awarded six district administrations for their performance in the rural housing sector.
Patnaik had on June 11 inaugurated the workshop for improving citizen-centric services through 3Ts, technology, teamwork and transparency.
“The whole purpose of this continuous exercise is that these 3Ts must lead to the fourth T, that is, transformation in the lives of the people of Odisha,” the Chief Minister stressed.
Patnaik said he is happy that the Collectors have deliberated at length on the identified initiatives.
“The discussions were quite fruitful and many innovative suggestions have come up during the workshop. Taking forward our commitment to the people’s governance, a web portal was launched on the first day of the workshop. This portal has already received 185 suggestions from the public, and I am hopeful many more suggestions will be received till June 30, 2017,” he said.
“In our resolve to fight corruption and to ensure last mile delivery, we have put in place transparent structures and processes in the functioning of the Government,” Patnaik further said.
The Chief Minister Patnaik praised the Collectors saying they all are doing good work, and asked them to take “bold decisions’, which would be fully supported by him, for people-centric governance.
Patnaik also highlighted some brilliant suggestions which came up during the last two days of the workshop.
The suggestions include public display of priority list of eligible beneficiaries under the rural housing scheme, setting up dedicated rural housing cells at district and block levels for redressing grievances and monitoring progress, reorganisation of the structure of the PACSs as single-point delivery centres for farmers.
The suggestions also include simplification of procedures for registration and disbursal of benefits to the construction workers, intensive campaign for the for collection of applications under the FRA in saturation mode and convergence of benefits under various schemes for the title holders, digitisation of textbooks and digital library for children and setting up of a student portal for disbursement of benefits to students.
Other suggestions which came up during the workshop are use of technology and social media to take feedback from students and ensuring delivery in a transparent manner, spreading awareness regarding Niramaya scheme, integration of all departments’ services including grievance redressal system on lok SeVa Adhikar portal and synchronisation of offline applications, transforming DICs into one stop centers for all schemes and information on employment opportunities.
Government infrastructure on hiring basis for entrepreneurs, single mobile water app and unified state water portal for project identification and management and grievance redressal, citizens’ feedback on municipal services by apps, display of drainage maintenance schedule, municipal service centers, easy and multiple points of payment, self-declaration for assessment of taxes, are also among the suggestions which came up at meeting.