The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh randomly called up on telephone as a part of the periodic exercise started by him to personally speak to complainants in order to confirm the redressal of their grievance and also to assess their level of satisfaction, here yesterday. The Minister received some of the spontaneous responses from the complainants he called. Shri Sanjay Sati from West Patel Nagar, New Delhi, working in the Department of Animal Husbandry said that he was overwhelmed by this experience. He said that he received calls from different officers in Department of Administrative Reforms & Grievances (ARPG), culminating in a final call from the Minister In-charge himself to ensure the redressal of his grievance relating to “Modified Assured Career Progression” (MACP).
Another complainant, Shri Bharat Sarmalkar from Tilak Nagar, Chembur in Maharasthra, said that his Passport renewal case had been pending for the last three months and it was amazing that when he filed his grievance with ARPG, he received the new renewed passport within no time, followed by a phone call from the office and now a phone call from the Minister in-charge himself. Shri Gyan Singh from Haiderpur, Delhi was thankful because since his retirement from DDA as a Staff Car Driver, he had been receiving only provisional pension and was denied the pension benefits due to non-regularization of suspension period during the service. He said, he filed his complaint with the ARPG as last resort and not only his pension benefits were released, but he also received a phone call from ARPG confirming the same.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that in the last two years, not only the grievance redressal mechanism under the government had been made proactive, but there was also an attempt to reach out to complainants directly. The result of this, he said, was that before the present government came in, the number of grievances / complaints per year was only 2 lakh, which had in last two years gone up to over 6 lakh per year because of prompt and satisfactory redressal of most of the complaints. Dr Jitendra Singh said, a mechanism has been evolved to review the status of grievance redressal on weekly basis and mostly the percentage of grievance redressal is more than 85% every week. Even in the current week ending on last working day of 19th August at 6:00 pm, out of 16890 complaints received, 16414 amounting to 97% had been disposed off. Those of the complaints which remain unaddressed and for which sometimes there are reminders on the Social Media, he said, the actual reasons are either technical or subjective reasons of complaint which may not be amenable to response under existing rules and regulations.