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Civic issues not solved even at senior level: NGO

As per Praja Foundation, out of the 81,555 complaints received last year, 13,581 remained unsolved

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Nitai Mehta, Founder and Managing Trustee of Praja Foundation (L), and Milind Mhaske, Project Director at Praja
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Most complaints on civic issues lodged with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) seem to fall on deaf ears, according to the annual report on civic issues released on Tuesday by Praja Foundation, an NGO that deals with citizen participation in governance. The report reveals that complaints that are not resolved at the initial stage or at ward offices, are not even solved by senior civic officials in most cases.

In 2016, around 17 per cent complaints were escalated from assistant municipal commissioners at ward offices to the level of the municipal commissioner, and still they remained unsolved. Nitai Mehta, managing trustee of the Praja Foundation, said that this shows that senior civic officials were not bothered to resolve citizens' complaints.

"Last year, the civic body received 81,555 complaints out of which 13,581 remained unsolved," said Mehta.

In 2016, the civic body received a 16,257 complaints related to buildings out of which 4,392 complaints were escalated to Level-I (assistant municipal commissioner or chief engineer) as not a single complaint was resolved at level I, and they further escalated to level II (deputy municipal commissioner) where also they remained unresolved. However, at level III or additional municipal commissioner level, 119 out of 4,392 complaints were resolved but 4,273 complaints remained unsolved till the end of the calendar year.

On an average, the civic body took 16 days in 2016 to address a single complaint. As per the Citizens' Charter accepted by the BMC, the average number of days required to resolve any complaint should be three days.

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