Govt launches telephone feedback mechanism on grievances

Setting a precedence, the government today launched a telephone feedback mechanism for grievance redressal of citizens.
Initiating the process, Union Minister of State for Personnel and Public Grievances Jitendra Singh personally called up three complainants chosen on a random basis, who had registered their grievances with the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances and their grievances were disposed off.
The Minister sought their feedback regarding the response given by the government to the grievances.
The complainants included Vijay V Lambat (Nagpur) who had complained regarding the refund of money from Income Tax Department.
The second person contacted by the Minister was Aravindbabu Pormar (Bangalore) who had complained against Railways and sought refund of money from the Ministry of Railways.

The third person contacted was Paladugu Samba Siva Rao (Odisha) whose grievance related to provident fund with the Ministry of Labour and Employment.

The citizens contacted thanked the Minister and the department. They also suggested that the citizens should be contacted once over phone before closing the grievance.
The Minister assured that the department is committed to taking steps in this direction.
Singh said "this direct citizen contact through telephone will not only enable us to assess the level of satisfaction received by the complaints after the redressal of grievance, it will also help in offering us valuable inputs required to improve the grievance redressal mechanism."

"In the current age of social media and web portal, this approach will also give the citizens a feeling of direct involvement in the government's grievance redressal mechanism," he said.
The Minister said that in future, he himself will be calling the citizens at random and verify whether their complaints have been disposed off.
Singh said that during the last one year, ending December 2015, the grievance cell has received nearly 10 lakh complaints as compared to the average of 2-3 lakh yearly complaints earlier.
He claimed nearly 90 per cent complaints are redressed now.