In an ambitious step towards bringing development and grievance settlement to the door step Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb launched the ‘CM Helpline Number 19005’ on Monday. From now anyone can make a call to this number and register his or her complaints, or request for government- which will then be redirected to the concerned department to be addressed immediately.
The entire mechanism with sophisticated equipment has been housed at the IT Bawan in Indranagar.
While inaugurating the CM’s Helpline 1905 Deb himself picked up two calls from Ranirbazar and Indranagar and asked his officials to look into their prayers.
“The idea is simple. It is aimed at bringing the government apparatus to the people’s door. It is in essence will operate more or less like a dedicated call centre and keep tab of each and every call. Then the follow up actions will be taken by the concerned department”, said a senior official.
After periodical evaluation of the calls coming directly from the fields this will also help government draw up a larger picture of people’s problems and what is going amiss and thus give required inputs for policy framing – in a sense with public participation.
“Like people call for police or fire service or other emergencies—without physically visiting the concerned department, here also the physical appearance of the citizens was cleared and distance between the officialdom and the common public”, he said adding that added it would be trend setter.
Chief Minister in his speech also said taking the government’s pro people initiatives at the people’s doorstep ‘without any partisan attitude’.
“When a grievance is aired or a complaint lodged or a request for any government help is asked, none is going to ask the political affiliation of the caller. Neither my officials handling it know it nor do I”, he said and added that his government’s one of the most important effort was to bring an end to the culture of extending public service in a partisan manner considering the political affiliations.
“This practice must end. Politics is for elections. Government is meant for all. No time should be wasted holding deputations, demonstrations throughout the year for achieving the rightful development or government package by the common people. We are committed for the development and it is our duties to take them to last man standing—no political question being asked”, he said. The Chief Minister also referred to the CSCs for bringing the governance closer to the people.
In the CM Helpline 1905 launching programme Principal Secretary J K Sinha, IT Secretary Tanusree Debbarma and IT director TK Chakma were also present.
