Time taken to dispose of public grievances down to 17 days: Jitendra Singh

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Friday said the average time limit for disposal of public grievances has now dropped to 17 days from 32 days in 2021.

Briefing the media about the achievements of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions in the past nine years here, he said the national rozgar mela is a unique concept visualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has institutionalised the government's recruitment process.

Most of the administrative and governance reforms are youth-centric and the rozgar mela stands apart as a major and bold initiative to provide government jobs to the youth, besides creating millions of job opportunities through various schemes, Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said.

Speaking about transparency and accountability in governance, he said that the benchmark for clean and effective government is the robust grievance redressal mechanism.

"A 10-step CPGRAMS reforms process has been adopted for improving disposal and reducing the time line which has resulted in weekly disposal rate of up to 95 to 100%. Average disposal time of central ministries/departments has improved from 32 days in 2021 to 27 days in 2022, to 17 days in April, 2023," the minister said.

CPGRAMS or Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System allows citizens to raise grievances against government departments online.

On an average 20 lakh grievances are registered annually, he said.

According to official data, 19.18 lakh public grievances were registered in 2022; two lakh in 2021; 22.71 lakh in 2020; and 18.67 lakh in 2019.

Singh said that the Centre has earned a revenue of more than Rs 370 crore from cleanliness campaign.

"For the first time, the realisation dawned in the society that 'swachhata' could also fetch you money. The swachhata campaign 2.0 was conducted in over one lakh office sites, 89.85 lakh square feet of space was freed and Rs 370.83 crore revenue earned from disposal of office scrap including electronic scrap," he said.

The minister said that the central government and "co-operating" state governments will distribute 10 lakh appointment letters in mission mode under its ambitious rozgar mela programme.

Referring to other youth-centric recruitment reforms, Singh said that interviews abolished for Group B non-gazetted and lower posts, leading to more transparency, computer-based examinations introduced in place of paper-based exams, regional languages introduced in SSC exams for various posts leading to increased participation of the youth for government jobs.

Dwelling on the administrative reforms of nine years, he said, Mission Karmayogi will prove to be a game-changing reform visualised and launched by Prime Minister Modi for capacity building with a paradigm shift - rule-based approach to role-based learning.

The minister informed that Capacity Building Commission (CBC) has been established for building a credible and uniform approach to capacity building.

"National standards for civil service training institutions have been launched by CBC," he was quoted as having said in a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry.

Singh said centres of excellence are being set up in every central training institutions.

"CBC is helping all ministries/departments/organisations in developing an annual capacity building plan. A national training conclave is being inaugurated on 11th June 2023," the minister said.

Briefing about several measures undertaken by the Ministry of Personnel, which is the nodal ministry for personnel management, Singh said concerted efforts have been taken to increase the representation of women in central government jobs and to provide them a balance between professional as well as family life.

He said minimum period for child care leave reduced from mandatory 15 days to five days and the limit of 22 years in case of disabled child for the purpose of a government servant availing child care leave under the provisions of Rule 43-C of the CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972 has been removed.

Singh also underlined that special allowance of Rs 3,000 per month to women employees with disability has been granted for child care with effect from July 1, 2022, which will increase by 25% on increase of dearness allowance by 50%.

Similarly, the families of missing employees covered under National Pension System (NPS) can now get family pension within six months of lodging an FIR and not wait for seven years after which employee is deemed dead, the statement said.

Even in cases where the government servant dies before completing a service of seven years, family pension shall be payable to the family at enhanced rate of 50 per cent of the last pay for the first 10 years and thereafter 30 per cent of the last pay, it said.