Only 23 complainants turn up

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 13

The Chandigarh Municipal Corporation today organised its first public meet to resolve the grievances of residents. The meet was organised at the Community Centre, Sector 22, where the MC received only 23 complaints.

The complaints ranged from non-functional streetlights in Sector 36, poor upkeep of N-choe, sanitation problem in Sector 44, encroachment in Shastri Market and its parking area, bad condition of neighbourhood parks in Sector 22, non-functional lights in parks sanitation problems in Faida village.

Though MC officials were expecting more residents to attend the first public meet, only 23 complaints were received. The MC Commissioner, B Purushartha, gave directions on the spot to MC officials concerned to redress the grievances. Besides, he also gave a deadline ranging from two days to a week to the official concerned to resolve the problems and submit the action-taken report with the MC grievance cell.

On complaints of bad condition of parks, the Municipal Commissioner urged the Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) to take over the parks for maintenance and said the MC would provide funds to maintain these parks. He said there were around 1,900 neighbourhood parks with the MC in the city and it was not possible for it to deploy staff in these parks. He urged the residents to come forward to maintain these parks as already 500 of them were being managed by the RWAs, he said. 

The MC Commissioner said the MC had already installed 400 dustbins in various parks and in the coming days, more dustbins would be installed in the parks.  

Grievance cell receives 273 complaints 

Since the launch of a single window grievance redress system, the MC here has received 273 complaints. These complaints pertain to stray dogs, sewerage, streetlights, paver blocks and solid waste  management. On February 3, MC Commissioner B Purushartha had inaugurated the Complaints and Grievances Redress Centre at the MC building in Sector 17. The MC officials have resolved a majority of the complaints, an MC official said.