Andhra Pradesh - Ongole   

Call centre to make Ongole spic and span

Special Correspondent

Town becomes first to open such a centre in State

ONGOLE : Leaking pipelines, choked drains, pothole-ridden roads, overflowing dustbins, fused streetlights may become a thing of the past in Ongole town.

Ongole municipality opened a call centre to receive complaints over telephone from the people on any of the above civic amenities and redress them within one or two days.

Ongole has achieved the distinction of being the first municipality in the State to open the call centre, register complaints from 9.30 am to 6 pm on all working days and monitor how they are redressed.

Inaugurating the call centre here on Tuesday, district Collector B. Udaya Lakshmi commended the Municipal Commissioner Challa Anuradha for taking the initiative to resolve the grievances of people relating to civic amenities expeditiously. Municipal Chairman Bapatla Hanumantha Rao, presided.

Ongole MLA Balineni Sreenivasa Reddy stressed the need to erase the impression among the people that there was deficiency of services in the municipality.

Civic amenities

Ms. Anuradha said that the call centre would help strengthen the relationship between people and the municipality. She said that people could now register their complaints on civic amenities by calling telephone number 234351. They should give their name, door number, street name, phone number, nature of complaint clearly. The complaint would be registered in the computer and an SMS message would be sent to the concerned field staff to attend to it.

If they failed to redress, the complaint would go to the notice of their superior officers and ultimately the Commissioner.

She said that a fine would be imposed on the field staff if any negligence was found on their part in rectifying the mistake.

Complaints against sanitation and water supply would be given top priority. Sanitary staff is expected to clear the dustbins regularly, desilt the drains, conduct fogging etc. People can complain on leaking pipelines, irregular water supply either through pipeline or tankers, timings etc.

Penalty would be imposed on the engineering department if it failed to provide domestic tap within 30 days of application.

Building plans should be approved within 15 days. People can have information from call centre on their dues relating to property tax, water tax.

Title transfer would be done within one week. Birth and death certificates also would be issued within five days.

Ms. Anuradha said that municipal corporations have been providing these services through citizens charter. But Ongole is the first municipality to implement this and usher in administrative reforms as part of C one component of Andhra Pradesh Urban Slum Improvement Program.

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Call centre to make Ongole spic and span

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