Citizens Voice Coimbatore President, C M Jayaraman, Secretary V A Shanmugham write to TN Chief Minister, Chief Secretary and District Collector to establish Citizens Charter and CCTV cameras at Govt. offices
Coimbatore: The Citizens Voice Coimbatore (CVC) President, C M Jayaraman and Secretary V A Shanmugham have written a letter to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M K Stalin, Chief Secretary, Irai Anbu and Coimbatore District Collector, G S Sameeran in which they have mentioned that "Nowadays it is the practice in many of the Government offices to engage outsiders without any proper authority for undertaking the day-to-day work activities in the respective offices besides engagement of contract employees without proper approval.
Some of the officials of the respective offices are engaging third persons, more particularly, retired officers and employees and others for meagre pay and that too paid by the respective officials and staff in order to engage them for other jobs or for their personal work. The general public who are dealing with the Government offices are unaware that they are not dealing with the authorized persons. This is leading to corrupt practices among the staff working in Government offices. By engaging such outsiders, the respective corrupt employees are easily escaping from corruption charges since the public do not deal directly with the Government staff and money transactions are done through these third persons.
Hence, a different type of ID card with colour codes should be issued to the various staff in Government offices. This will enable the general public who are visiting Government offices to identify the person with whom they are dealing."
The letter also mentioned that "Customer service points kiosks are also fleecing innocent consumers since nowhere in the kiosks are the authorised service charges to be collected displayed. This compels citizens to pay exorbitantly more than the authorised fee and brings disrepute to the Government, and makes the customers shed tears. Likewise in all government offices, at present the phone numbers of the Vigilance Department and Anti-corruption department are only displayed.
It will be immensely useful if the phone numbers of higher officials of the respective departments, the District Collector and the Department Secretary are also displayed prominently in all Government offices. This will facilitate the general public to represent their grievances to higher officials immediately and prevent spoiling the image of the Government."
"Every Government office must have a Citizen’s Charter to help the public know the permitted time to complete any prescribed job. This also empowers the citizen in relation to public service deliverance. In addition to the above, we suggest that provision of CCTV cameras in all Government offices would help higher officials to monitor movement and presence of staff in the offices, like in the Taluk office for land patta, ration card, nativity certificate etc.
Likewise, as prevalent in some other Government departments, if all the petitions/pleas of the public are uploaded in a system called 'Tracking System,” the public after submission of their petition can keep a watch on the movement of their grievance petition filed till its ultimate disposal, besides clearing petitions within the stipulated time and to help officials to initiate action on persons responsible for delay in attending/replying to public grievances," stated the letter.
Some of the officials of the respective offices are engaging third persons, more particularly, retired officers and employees and others for meagre pay and that too paid by the respective officials and staff in order to engage them for other jobs or for their personal work. The general public who are dealing with the Government offices are unaware that they are not dealing with the authorized persons. This is leading to corrupt practices among the staff working in Government offices. By engaging such outsiders, the respective corrupt employees are easily escaping from corruption charges since the public do not deal directly with the Government staff and money transactions are done through these third persons.
Hence, a different type of ID card with colour codes should be issued to the various staff in Government offices. This will enable the general public who are visiting Government offices to identify the person with whom they are dealing."
The letter also mentioned that "Customer service points kiosks are also fleecing innocent consumers since nowhere in the kiosks are the authorised service charges to be collected displayed. This compels citizens to pay exorbitantly more than the authorised fee and brings disrepute to the Government, and makes the customers shed tears. Likewise in all government offices, at present the phone numbers of the Vigilance Department and Anti-corruption department are only displayed.
It will be immensely useful if the phone numbers of higher officials of the respective departments, the District Collector and the Department Secretary are also displayed prominently in all Government offices. This will facilitate the general public to represent their grievances to higher officials immediately and prevent spoiling the image of the Government."
"Every Government office must have a Citizen’s Charter to help the public know the permitted time to complete any prescribed job. This also empowers the citizen in relation to public service deliverance. In addition to the above, we suggest that provision of CCTV cameras in all Government offices would help higher officials to monitor movement and presence of staff in the offices, like in the Taluk office for land patta, ration card, nativity certificate etc.
Likewise, as prevalent in some other Government departments, if all the petitions/pleas of the public are uploaded in a system called 'Tracking System,” the public after submission of their petition can keep a watch on the movement of their grievance petition filed till its ultimate disposal, besides clearing petitions within the stipulated time and to help officials to initiate action on persons responsible for delay in attending/replying to public grievances," stated the letter.