Govt launches CPGRAMS reforms in postal dept for quick grievance redressal

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday launched CPGRAMS reforms in the Department of Posts to reduce the time taken for grievance redressal and also improve the quality.

The Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions said the priority of the government is to provide transparent and citizen-centric governance to the people.

At the launch of the Centralised Public Grievances Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) reforms, Singh said it will lead to reduction in grievance disposal time and improved quality of redressal.

Though grievance redressal mechanism existed in the past also, it was not as proactive and responsive as it is now, he claimed.

"The mechanism has been institutionalised now with the number of grievances lodged increasing from two lakh earlier to about 16 lakh now. This increase is due to the trust shown by the people of the country in the grievance redressal mechanism of the government," the minister said.

Secretary of Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) and Pensions K V Eapen said public grievances are more of a feedback system to the government to understand the root causes of problems.

Director General (Posts) Meera Handa said the public grievances mechanism is important for departments with large public interface.

"Keeping in mind the mammoth operations of the Department of Posts, some complaints are inevitable. Till now, top-down approach towards grievance redressal was followed and now with the new version of CPGRAMS, the complainant has been empowered. This will also save the processing time by about seven to 10 days," she said.

Additional Secretary, DARPG, V Srinivas, said the CPGRAMS 7.0 version is proposed to be replicated in the rest of the ministries in the coming months.

"Currently, the DARPG handles about 16 lakh grievances every year of which 95 per cent are disposed off satisfactorily," he said.

Vishvapavan Pati, ADG in the Department of Posts, said under the new version, there will be almost no manual intervention with mapping of 1.5 lakh post offices.

The new upgraded version, CPGRAMS 7.0, provides for grievances filed on CPGRAMS to be directly sent to field level grievance officers by providing user IDs to all field level functionaries.

The Department of Posts is one of the largest recipients of public grievances in India. It is expected the CPGRAMS 7.0 will cut processing time by 50 per cent in the department. It provides the facility to lodge a grievance online from any geographical location and enables people to track online the grievance being followed up with departments concerned and also allows DARPG to monitor it.