Twitter
Advertisement

Total disconnect among corporators, BMC and citizens: NGO

The report also said that the number of complaints regarding roads and potholes were maximum during this period, followed by those pertaining to drainage and water supply.

Latest News
article-main
Praja Foundation managing trustee Nitai Mehta and senior associate Milind Mhaske
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

There is a "total disconnect" between the people's representatives, municipal administration and the citizens over Mumbai's civic problems, a city-based NGO claimed on Tuesday. Praja Foundation, which works on civic issues, also released a report on the complaints filed by the citizens and corporations' evaluations in all the 17 ward committees, between March 2012 and December 2015.

"On the basis of figures that we obtained through Right To Information (RTI) queries in the departments concerned of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), we found that there is complete disengagement between the people's representatives, civic authorities and citizens and this is because representatives don't care for the commom man," said Nitai Mehta, managing trustee of the Praja Foundation.

"This report card reveals that there is a missing link between the work of the elected representatives and the quality of governance in Mumbai. The recent Deonar dumping ground fire is a live example of what is going on in our city," he said.

The report also said that the number of complaints regarding roads and potholes were maximum during this period, followed by those pertaining to drainage and water supply.

The report, however, showed that there was improvement in some areas of civic administration as the average days taken by the BMC to resolve the complaints came down to 13 days in 2015 from 17 days in 2014.

The recent findings by the foundation also revealed that the BMC took nearly 128 days to answer a question raised by the respective ward councillors. The findings were based on average time taken by the civic corporation to answer Point of Order (PO) questions raised by several ward committees over a period of four years.

In addition, not only the corporation showed complacency in answering questions, the ward councillors also didn't show any real zeal in asking those questions. According to the report, as many as 91% of the councillors asked fewer than 10 PO questions in the last four years.

In what may appear as a dichotomous discovery to the aforementioned figure, however, the total number of questions raised by the ward committees was a staggering 3,738 in 1,051 meetings, with an overall attendance of 76%.

Meanwhile, seeking a proper channel for people to raise their civic issues, another senior associate of the foundation, Milind Mhaske, said, "Functioning of ward committees needs to be seriously improved. Councillors need to study civic issues pertaining to their constituency, then prepare agendas and push these in the committee meetings in a planned manner."

"The administration also needs to start taking point of order questions seriously, and answer them prominently," he said adding, "For there to be some concrete change, the administration needs to change from within, which can only happen when it becomes pro-active and embrace good governance practices."

When asked if the BMC was the worst performing corporation in the country, Mehta said, "According to a recent study by NGO Janaagraha, BMC scored 4.2 out of 10 points, which made it the best among the worst performing civic corporations in the country." Janaagraha is a Bangalore-based non-profit organisation, which does an annual study on performance of the biggest civic corporations across India.

Another reason cited for the debacle in the functioning of the BMC ward committees was that a few ward councilors were holding two offices. "Along with being councillors, they also serve as MLAs and MPs. Hence, the corporation Act has to be modified, so that a person can hold only one elected office," added Mehta.

—With inputs from PTI

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement