Government wants quick grievance redressal

NEW DELHI: The government has told different ministries and departments under the central government to submit a status report on three oldest citizen complaints pending in their departments along with specific explanation for the delay in their redressals.

According to a report prepared by the ministry of personnel, 44,293 citizen grievances are pending with 107 government ministries and department for more than two months, and 24,097 of them were lodged more than a year ago.

A ministry officials said the government is keen to change this situation.

The previous UPA government had launched the grievance redressal mechanism for -citizens and government employees, touting it as one of its most important initiatives to fix timelines for delivery of services. It had fixed a two-month deadline for disposal of citizen grievances.

The new government has now decided that the oldest pending grievances should be attended first and has included the same in the Result Framework Documents (RFDs), or annual targets, for each ministry in 2014-15.

In a circular issued to all ministries on July 10 the ministry of personnel said redress of the three oldest pending grievances in all ministries and departments is an RFD requirement for 2014-15.

The ministry will also hold review meetings with all ministries and departments, starting with a review meeting with 10 departments on June 16. “The status in the three oldest pending grievances may also be brought along with reasons for delay in their redress,” the ministry circular said.

The ministry of coal, department of commerce, department of fertilisers, Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI), department of economic affairs and ministry of agriculture are among the ten ministries where pendency will be reviewed first.

The department of higher education has the highest number of grievances pending for more than a year at 3,041, followed by the department of defence (2,663).

A study done by the department of administrative reforms earlier showed that a majority of grievances are related to inordinate delay in taking decisions and refusal, or inability, to make verbal replies.