CUTTACK: On June 28 when Birabara Sahu of Anandapur under Mahanga block of the district ventured to lodge a complaint against the PDS retailer of his area, he and others of his village had not many expectations. Fed up with the gross irregularities of the retailer Kishore Pradhan in distribution of the PDS commodities like rice, sugar and kerosene to the people and his highhanded attitude, Birabara thought of bringing it to the notice of the higher authorities of the district administration. Not with much hope of any action against the retailer but more with an intention to instil fear in the dealer. Birabara had filed his complaint through the Integrated Grievance Redressal System (IGRS) set up at the office of Sub Collector, Cuttack Sadar. And, to the astonishment of the entire village, an inquiry was immediately conducted. On finding guilty, retailer Pradhan was suspended on July 11, all in 13 days of the complaint. Debasish Sarangi of Dalijodi Berhampur under Tangi Choudwar block had also tried the IGRS route to file a complaint online in connection with dysfunctional village water supply system in his area on July 11. The pipeline and supply system were installed by the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation department in 2008 but it stopped working after only six months. The matter was immediately taken up with RWSS authorities and water supply was restored by August 27. The IGRS, in fact, has given a new dimension to attending to citizens’ problems and grievances and sprucing up of administrative machinery to effect instant response to situations. Launched in June this year, the system that integrates both online and manual complaint redressal mechanisms, has received over 105 complaints so far. Of them, over 55 have been disposed of and substantial chunk of the rest are well on way to be resolved. The driving objective behind instituting the system was to develop a transparent, hassle-free mechanism to deal with citizen grievances and complaints in a time-bound manner. The online system enables proper tracking and monitoring of cases until disposal. Each and every complaint is uploaded on to the server and is monitored by the sub-collector on a weekly basis. Manually submitted complaints are also uploaded inro the system. Each complainant is given a ticket number so that he also can track down the status of his case. The IGRS functions from the portal www.subcollectorctc.in. “Earlier, there was no way to track the progress of complaints from the point of departure to the agencies concerned as they were on a wide sector from basic civic issues, land and revenue, block development, welfare schemes and developmental projects. With IGRS, this very problem was solved and each case can be tracked and the officials are obliged to take immediate action. The grievance cell opens on Saturdays to monitor the grievances received, processed and disposed of,” Sub-Collector JP Das said.
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