Union Minister of State for Personnel, PG and Pensions Dr. Jitendra Singh today launched the “Feedback Call Centres on Public Grievances” and interacted live with citizens whose grievances have been successfully redressed on the COVID-19 National Monitor for Public Grievances. Dr. Jitendra Singh complimented DARPG on reaching the milestone of redressing One Lakh COVID-19 Public Grievances so far. He said that the “Leadership of PM Modi has inspired Government to put in a lot of effort to addressing Grievances of Common Man”.

This is the first time that a Senior Minister of Government has interacted live with Citizens who had filed grievances during COVID-19 and also paved the way for other Ministries to take up citizen grievances in an effective manner along with feedback mechanism.

The DARPG has in collaboration with BSNL operationalized Feed Back Call Centers in Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Ajmer, Guntur, Coimbatore and Guntakal with 1406 call center operators.

The Feedback Call Centres would seek feedback from individual citizens on citizen satisfaction on 1.28 lac COVID-19 Public Grievances that have been filed on CPGRAMS for the period 30/3/2020 to 30/5/2020. Necessary trainings on the feedback questionnaires to call centre operators has been completed on June 9-10, 2020. Feedback call-centres would operate in Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese and Rajasthani.

On this occasion, Dr. Jitendra Singh interacted with 4 citizens whose grievances were redressed on the COVID-19 National Monitor within a period of 3 days. Amongst the citizens who interacted with Dr. Jitendra Singh were (a) Smt. Renuka V.Parasappagol resident of Bijapur, Karnataka whose grievance of a refund from Canara Bank was redressed by Department of Financial Services (b) Shri Gordhanbhai Jethabhai Patel resident of Vadodara Gujarat whose grievance of a refund of mature MIS investment was redressed by Department of Posts (c) Shri Lakshminarayanan resident of Delhi whose grievance for treatment of his daughter with HCQ was redressed by the AIIMS and (d) Shri Mrithinjayan resident of Chennai, Tamil Nadu whose grievance of accepting monthly installments of deposits was approved by the Department of Posts. The citizens informed Dr. Jitendra Singh that they had learnt of the COVID-19 National Monitor for Public Grievances from his tweets and statements, and thanked the Government for timely redressal of their grievances.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that in Modi 2.0, CPGRAMS has witnessed radical reforms and transformational governance resulting in a comprehensive overhaul of grievance redressal in India. Amongst the steps taken were the implementation of CPGRAMS Reforms in the top 20 Grievance receiving Ministries/ Departments delineating last mile grievance officers, Integration of State/ Union Territories Grievance Portals with CPGRAMS and Feedback Call Centres. He said that COVID 19 pandemic has created a world of digital opportunities to empower India’s citizens and DARPG must make best use of the crisis led reforms in the coming days. Dr. Jitendra Singh said DARPG should bring out a compendium of success stories on successfully redressed Public Grievances which may be disseminated for restoring confidence in Citizens that the Government is sensitive to their issues.

The launch function was attended by Dr. K. Shivaji Secretary DARPG, V.Srinivas, Additional Secretary DARPG, Shri P.K.Purwar, Chairman and Managing Director BSNL, Smt. Jaya Dubey Joint Secretary DARPG and senior officials of AIIMS, Posts, DARPG and BSNL, along with 1500 Call Centre operators of BSNL and citizens whose grievances were successfully redressed.