New Delhi, Apr 12 (PTI) Noting that a large part of public grievances are being disposed off in a routine and ad-hoc manner, a Parliamentary Committee has said that every endeavour should be made to resolve the plaints to the satisfaction of the complainant.
In its report, the panel asked the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) to develop mechanism to ensure accountability of the government officials dealing with the citizen’s grievances.
Around 20 lakh public grievances were received through an online portal — Centralized Public Grievances Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS)– during 2021.
The Committee is of the view that no government can claim itself to be accountable, responsive and user-friendly unless it has established an efficient and effective grievance redress mechanism, the report said.
In fact, the efficiency and effectiveness of any organisation can be measured by its grievance redressal mechanism as it provides important feedback on its working, the Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, said in its report on Demands for Grants 2022-23 pertaining to the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances and Department of Pension & Pensioners’ Welfare (Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions).
Thus grievance redressal should be one of the core components of good governance, it said.
The report said, it has come to the notice of the Parliamentary Committee that a large part of grievances are being disposed off in a routine and ad-hoc manner and the complainant remains dissatisfied with the redressal.
The Committee feels that the public grievances should be resolved in a professional and satisfactory manner.
“There is a need to fix accountability on the decision making authorities. In the event of unsatisfactory redressal of the grievances, the public usually tend to approach courts for redressal of their grievances which increases the burden of courts, so the Committee desires every endeavour should be made to resolve grievances to the satisfaction of the complainant,” it said in the report tabled in the Parliament recently.
Accordingly, the Committee recommends the department to develop mechanism to ensure accountability of the government officials dealing with the citizen’s grievances.
The Committee took note of the fact that a very large number of the public grievances are limited to some specific aspects of certain organisations/ departments and desired that all those areas where a large number of grievances are received, should be examined and in those common areas of grievances, after analyzing the root cause, systemic changes wherever necessary should be brought without any delay which in turn will reduce the volume of grievances to a large extent.
More and more people are becoming aware of the CPGRAMS, which may be gauged from the ever increasing number of grievances received every year on the portal, the report said.
However, a large number of citizens are still not aware of the CPGRAMS; especially in the rural and semi-urban areas the awareness about it is very low or negligible, it said.
The Committee therefore recommends that every effort should be made to advertise on a large scale in mass media including newspapers, FM radio, social media etc., about CPGRAMS in the scheduled languages, the report said.
The panel also asked the government to bring a scheme for a time-bound delivery of goods and services for citizens.
“Initially the scheme may be started by including a few basic services only, which may later be expanded to include other services also. The scheme should include appropriate measures for reward and punishment of government functionaries so that it remains effective,” it said.
