Mo Sarkar Impact: WATCO Consumer Gets Instant Justice against Poor Service Delivery

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s transformative initiative ‘Mo Sarkar’ that solely depends on the effectiveness of the feedback mechanism is bearing fruits in empowering common man in the State. One more example of this came to the fore.
A WATCO (Water Corporation of Odisha) consumer got instant justice against poor public service delivery through Mo Sarkar programme.

Principal Secretary H&UD Dept G Mathi Vathanan while making random phone calls to people to ascertain direct feedback from them about delivery of public service got to know that a consumer was not fairly treated by the WATCO.

The person identified as Akhaya Kumar Mohapatra of Khordha during the interaction told the Principal Secretary that despite making repeated calls to the concerned contractor and WATCO to get the defect rectified neither the contractor nor WATCO responded, hence he (consumer) had to engage another private contractor to get the leakage repaired and had to pay Rs 1500.

This allegation was immediately enquired into.

The enquiry revealed that Nortech, an agency, has done defective work in providing a connection and did not respond to the Rectification request.
Following this, the consumer got the rectification work done at his own cost through another Contractor. Besides, there was also a lack of supervision by the concerned Assistant Manager concerned.

Upon instructions from the Principal secretary of the Housing and Urban Development department, GM of WATCO and PD operation had gone to the house of the consumer and directed Nortech, the Executing agency, to pay Rs 1500 to the consumer to defray the cost of rectification.

EIC PHEO is directed to issue a warning in writing to the concerned official for lack of supervision.