Govt receives over 1 lakh COVID-related grievances; Jitendra Singh launches feedback call centres

New Delhi, Jun 15 () As many as 1.28 lakh coronavirus-related public grievances have been filed with the central government, according to an official statement.

Call centres in different cities and languages to seek feedback on such public grievances was launched on Monday by Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Jitendra Singh, who also interacted live with citizens whose grievances have been successfully redressed, it said.

This is the first time that a senior minister of government has interacted live with citizens who had filed grievances related to the pandemic and also paved way for other ministries to take up citizen grievances in an effective manner along with a feedback mechanism, the statement issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

"The feedback call centres would seek feedback from individual citizens on citizen satisfaction on 1.28 lakh COVID-19 public grievances that have been filed on CPGRAMS (Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System) for the period March 30, 2020 to May 30, 2020," it said.

Singh complimented the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) on reaching the milestone of redressing over one lakh COVID-19 public grievances so far.

He said that COVID 19 pandemic has created a world of digital opportunities to empower India's citizens and DARPG must make best use of the crisis led reforms in coming days.

Singh said that the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inspired the government to put in a lot of effort to address grievances of common man.

The DARPG has in collaboration with BSNL operationalised feedback call centres in Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Ajmer, Guntur, Coimbatore and Guntakal with 1,406 call centre operators, the statement said.

Feedback call centres would operate in several languages including Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese and Rajasthani, the statement said.

On the occasion, Singh interacted with four citizens whose grievances were redressed on the COVID-19 national monitor within a period of three days.

Amongst the citizens who interacted with the minister were Renuka V Parasappagol resident of Bijapur, Karnataka whose grievance of a refund from Canara Bank was redressed by Department of Financial Services.

Others with whom the minister interacted were Gordhanbhai Jethabhai Patel resident of Vadodara, Gujarat whose grievance of a refund of mature MIS (Monthly Investment Scheme) investment was redressed by Department of Posts.

Lakshminarayanan, a resident of Delhi, had a grievance related to the treatment of his daughter with HCQ (Hydroxychloroquine) which was redressed by the AIIMS and Mrithinjayan, a resident of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, whose grievance related to acceptance of monthly instalments of deposits was approved by the Department of Posts, it said.

The citizens informed Singh that they had learnt of the COVID-19 national monitor for public grievances from his tweets and statements, and thanked the government for timely redressal of their grievances.

Singh said that in Modi 2.0, CPGRAMS has witnessed radical reforms and transformational governance resulting in comprehensive overhaul of grievance redressal in India.

Amongst the steps taken were the implementation of CPGRAMS reforms in top 20 grievance receiving ministries/departments delineating last mile grievance officers, integration of state/union territories grievance portals with CPGRAMS and feedback call centres, the minister said.

Singh said DARPG should bring out a compendium of success stories on successfully redressed public grievances which may be disseminated for restoring confidence in citizens that the government is sensitive to their issues. AKV RHL