Addressing Public Grievances through Digital Mode Brought to Focus in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Following restrictions on public movement and norms of ‘social distancing’ during the pandemic fight, the Odisha Government has focused on redressing public grievances through digital mode.

Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy, in a high level meeting held in Lokseba Bhawan recently reviewed preparedness of the departments for this task.

Review show that e-abhijog has already been developed and linked to all departments as a online common platform. Chief Secretary directed the departments to prioritize disposal of the grievances through this platform. The departments were asked to do empathetic diligence of the grievances lodged and take those to logical end.

Further, Tripathy advised the departments to popularize the system and encourage citizens for using the e-abhijog platform than running to different offices.

Principal Secretary General Administration and Public Grievances Sanjiv Chopra presented different proposals for accepting public grievances in view of the entry restriction to various Government offices. It was decided that phone numbers of the officials would be made available near the entry gate for conveying urgent grievances. A grievance box could be kept near the gate for dropping the grievances. The petitioners would be requested to give their contact details like mobile number, e mail, whatsaap number etc. while lodging the complains.

Principal Secretary Chopra added, “through e-Abhijog a citizen can directly address his grievance to the offices of Chief Minister, Chief Secretary, District Collectors, DG Office and RDCs through one posting. The action taking authority will tag multiple petitions on same subject received from one petitioner and will send the action taken report”.

It was further decided that a covid specific grievance cell would be formed under Chairmanship of Collector to monitor the grievances on daily basis at the district level. An officer not below the rank of a deputy collector, district informatics officer along with technical staff of CMGI would be engaged in the cell. Collector would suitably instruct his sub-ordinate offices to form grievance redressal cell at their level and attend to grievances received both online and offline mode. Collector would review the activities of the grievance cells of district and other subordinate offices through VC on each Monday. A State level Grievance Monitoring Committee would function under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary to review the disposal of Grievance on each fortnight.

Development Commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, Additional Secretary PG and GA Sri Indramani Tripathy, Director Public Grievance Radheshyam Padhee , Director ( Technical) NIC Bhanupriya Prasad Satpathy along with other senior officers participated in the deliberations.