Top officials get grievance redress tasks

The Bengal government has asked the secretaries of various departments to take special care to redress grievances of common people — which are forwarded to them from the grievance cell in the chief minister’s office — within a week. Chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi has sent a letter to all the department secretaries to this effect underscoring the need resolve the complaints promptly. In his letter, he mentioned the following five steps to ensure that grievances of common people are redressed without any delay.

• The head of the departments (secretaries) should not leave grievance redress resolution entirely to nodal officers
• The secretaries should take citizen feedback to confirm the status of grievance redress
• The secretaries should check the jurisdiction of the officials before forwarding the grievances to avoid jurisdictional contradiction and unnecessary delay
• Case specific note on actual action taken must be mentioned in the action taken report
• Documentary evidence should be attached to establish that action has indeed been initiated
  Sources in the administration have said the move is significant as it bears a clear hint that the government is very serious about redressing grievances of common people at the earliest as the grievance redress cell of the CMO is receiving thousands of complaints from common people over various government services.
  “It has often been noticed that the matter remained pending for weeks even after forwarding the complaints to respective departments…. The top brass of the government is in no mood to tolerate such delinquencies as the rural polls are scheduled for next year. This is the reason why the chief secretary wrote the letter,” said a source.
  
  Recently, the chief minister expressed her displeasure over the delay in redressing the grievances, most of which are coming up the rural areas. “As people are not getting work under the 100-day job scheme since the Centre stopped releasing funds, they are lodging complaints about several other services,” said a source.A section of the officials said involving secretaries directly with the grievance redress system could make the process more effective.
  A section of officials, however, said the move may leave an additional burden on the secretaries, who are already under tremendous pressure to deliver on other schemes and projects on time.“The government should ensure that the entire team of officials — particularly those in the junior rank — play an important role if it wants to redress grievances on time. These officials have grievances over non-release of dearness allowances and that is the reason behind the lack of motivation at the lower level,” said a source.
  
  A section of the officials said the state government was set to launch a programme similar to Didike Bolo soon to make it easier for the rural populace to lodge air grievances.“In that case, the government has to deal with more complaints compared to what it is dealing with these days. So, keeping top officials involved in the process may make the system more efficient,” said a bureaucrat.