Garbage disposal, no groceries in Goa: Complaints for govt after Covid-19 lockdown

From groceries not being delivered in Goa to pleas from the UK and New York to evacuate stranded Indians, from frantic requests for garbage disposal to complaints about police harassment -- these are some of the matters that have come to the central government ‘s notice since the 21-day lockdown to curtail the spread of the coronavirus disease began on March 25.

Around 345 complaints relating to Covid-19 were registered with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and various government departments and ministries, according to an official in the Department of Administrative Reform and Public Grievances (DARPG). The DAPRG has now sorted 336 complaints into 11 categories to “expeditiously address them.”

“These grievances have been filed with the Prime Minsiter’s Office on the PM”s website,” a senior DARPG official said on condition of anonymity. “There is a 60 -day period for the redressal of grievances filed with the PMO. But since these are urgent, and a huge data dump has taken place, a separate portal has been set up to monitor and address them.”

These complaints will be resolved in a period of three days.

The 11 categories include inadequate facilities in hospitals, problem in donating to the PM-CARES fund, essential supplies not being provided, request for rescue from another country, stuck in some place because of lockdown, harassment, lockdown not adhered to, examination-related and quarantine-related matters, suggestions and others, according to data accessed by Hindustan Times.

A majority of the grievances are health-related, the official cited above added. These include overcrowding of isolation wards, lack of masks and sanitisers and not enough testing facilities or hospitals being ill-equipped to test patients.

According to the official, the DARPG has also received requests for immediate garbage disposal and evacuation of Indians from overseas.

“We have received requests from UK and New York to evacuate Indians stranded there as the situation has gotten really bad in those countries,” he said. Several students, family members and concerned parties have also reached out to external affairs minister S. Jaishankar on the same issue, including senior Nationalist Congress Party leader Supriya Sule.

“We are looking into it. People have also complained that essential services, like garbage collection, are not happening anymore,” the official said.

There have also been requests from people to intervene with banks since the Reserve Bank of India has allowed a moratorium on payments of equated monthly instalment but the banks haven’t responded, leading to concerns among consumers about being penalised in case of non-payment of dues.

“There are also litigants who have reached out to us,” said the first official. “They haven’t been able to reach courts on time and are afraid it may adversely impact their cases. They have asked us for help.”

The DARPG has also received requests to help ease supply chains so that essential services may not be hampered. In Goa, according to the analysis accessed by Hindutan Times, people have complained about groceries not being provided. Seven requests to postpone government exams have also been received.

Among the harassment complaints are cases of people being evicted from college and police high-handedness. Around 28 grievances have been lodged under the lockdown not being followed category; that includes private sector and postal employees being called to work, according to the data.

“In the general pipeline (PMO or CPGRAMS) we receive lakhs of grivances,” a second official said. “The Covid-19 specific ones have been segregated for immediate attention.”

CPGRAMS is short for Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System

The department has also received suggestions to extend the lockdown. There have also been bogus claims like discovery of a Covid-19cure. A person even lodged 54 grievances not related to Covid-19 that the department has noted.

The grievances have been collated on a portal on the DARPG website launched by minister of personnel, public grievances and pensions Jitendra Singh on Wednesday. These have further been allocated to each department/ministry for redressal.

On the day of the launch, the National Monitoring Dashboard received 43 grievances related to the ministry of health and family welfare, 31 grievances under the ambit of the ministry of external affairs and 26 grievances in the domain of the ministry of finance.

“It is the endeavour of the Modi Government to ensure timely redressal of Covid-19 grievances and directions have been issued to all ministries/ departments to prioritize these grievances and provide redressal in a period of three days,” Singh said on Tuesday.

“For the remainder of the lockdown, these will be addressed on a priority basis and anyone wishing to lodge a complaint may log on to the website,” the first official said. “After that, they may be merged with the PMO again.”