STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: Union Min-ister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh on Saturday felicitated and gave award of certificate to the Union Ministries with outstanding record in handling public grievances.
The practice of giving such awards was started by the present government last year and today’s awards were given to ministries/departments which were found to have done outstanding work in handling public grievances on PG portal during the last quarter, as per the prescribed criteria.
The ministries which received the award today in three different groups included the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region DoNER) and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Group A, Ministry of Women and Child Development and Ministry of Housing in Group B, and Central Board of Direct Taxes, Ministry of Finance in Group C.
Dr Jitendra disclosed to the media persons that an exclusive grievance redressal service on twitter, described as ‘Twitter Sewa’, has been started by Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) in the Ministry of Personnel from 1st of this month. This real – time ‘Twitter Sewa’, he said, will enable DARPG to reach common public and various stakeholders for facilitating instant grievances response as well as other issues of importance related to the department.
Dr Singh said, the number of grievances received has increased considerably in the last two years which only shows the increasing faith of public in the Modi government. The emphasis of the government, he said, has been on transparency, accountability and citizen – centricity. The evidence of this is visible in the form of current grievance disposal rate in the Ministry of Personnel which has gone upto 90 per cent as an average and during certain weeks almost 100 per cent.
Dr Jitendra said, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has started an experiment of randomly calling up complainants on telephone to assess the level of satisfaction and obtain their inputs. He himself also makes such random calls from time to time, he disclosed.
Putting across an innovative idea, Dr Singh said, the inputs received from the complainants and their grievances will be professionally worked out as research source material to plan further administrative reforms. For this purpose, he said, published material in the form of book, as well as a coffee table book will also be planned.
However, Dr Singh said, the public also needs to be educated that timely grievance disposal does not necessarily mean fulfilling individual’s aspiration which may sometime be subjective or illogic.
