Sir,

I often read the views of readers in Star of Mysore posting pictures and comments on the poor job done by Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) in spending tax-payers money in improving the life of the citizens and in maintaining infrastructure.

The picture above is just one of the many poor state of the road and side walk on Kalidasa Road. It has been in this sorry state for over 10 months.

I would like to know if the MCC has appointed maintenance contractors for road, sidewalks, storm water drains, water and regular drainage. If this has been done it is the right of the residents to know the scope of work and also what the civic body is doing to penalise residents who do not observe civic rules.

I have worked for about 40 years abroad and I wish to share my experience and thoughts of the impressive work done by the City Municipality in keeping their city spotlessly clean and thereby provide clean, healthy and obstruction-free environment to its citizens. The Municipality (via tender) appoints contractors for each municipality wards for street lighting, electrical distribution, under ground drainage, water supply, garbage collection, road cleaning etc., for a period of 3 to 5 years.

When the contract is awarded, the public is informed through media the details of the Contract, Contract Identification Number, Name of Contractor, Period of Contract, Area-wise, Amount of the contract, Contact number of the Contractors Call Centre, Contact number of the Municipal Call Centre (manned 24×7).

Any citizen or resident can call up the call centre to register a complaint of garbage not removed, water leakage, potholes, street light not working (every street light post has a number painted on the post). And in response, the complainant gets an sms with the complaint register number for follow up or an sms to inform the complainant that the complaint has been attended to.

The contractor is obligated once the complaint is registered (online) and a work order is automatically or manually generated by the system or the Call Centre Operator, is received he has to attend to the complaint writing 4 hours of receiving the complaint. If the contractor feels he need a long period to complete the work order he has to get in writing from the Municipality an NOC for the delay. Failing which the penalty is so high (calculated on a per day basis for each delay).

Municipality Staff are assigned to each ward and for each trade must drive around his assigned area to look for repair works that need to be done and also check call centre generated work order status, photograph the progress or completion and then only close the work order. Why can’t such a system be implemented in India? It saves tax-payers money.

– George Rego, Mysuru, 22.7.2020

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