Bhubaneswar, Aug. 7: The Rourkela Municipal Corporation is going to start a citizens' grievance cell from tomorrow to address the problems of the people.

The corporation has taken up the move, as there is no elected body to take up the cause of the people. The election to form a council gets delayed as some people have challenged in the court the decision to expand the municipality into a municipal corporation by incorporating some peripheral villages under its purview.

"Our officials will go to respective wards on a given date to interact with the residents to know about their problems," said civic body administrator and additional district magistrate Manisha Banerjee.

Banerjee stressed on public participation in mitigating the problems of the people. "Putting an end to the practice of open defecation as well as construction of private and public toilets are some of the areas on which we are going to focus more," Banerjee said.

The civic body has identified as many as 19,286 households and received 9,600 applications for construction of toilets. Work order has been issued in 8,734 cases. "As of now, we have found that only 1,810 people have toilets," said the civic body administrator.

The corporation is planning to impose a fine on open defecation. In the first phase, those households, who have not yet constructed toilets despite getting the work order, will be penalised. "They will have to pay a fine of Rs 50 each time they are caught," she said.

Besides, the civic body will launch an awareness drive on the benefits of constructing individual and public toilets.

The civic body administrator is also considering suggestions regarding various civic problems, including the deteriorating condition of the city market.

Rourkela, a cultural melting pot that boasts of the state's biggest steel plant in the public sector, is set to become Odisha's second smart city after Bhubaneswar. It figured among the list of 27 smart cities released on September 20, 2016 in New Delhi by the then Union urban development minister, Venkaiah Naidu.

In light of that development, the authorities will start convening meetings to know the requirements of a smart city. The first will be held tomorrow at Panposh, and more such conferences will be convened till December, in which senior officials will be present.

This apart, the civic body is going to introduce women-friendly "pink auto-rickshaw" in the city. "We will help them learn driving, obtain licences and other documents from the regional transport office and get bank loans," she said. However, she said the civic body would not extend any financial assistance in this regard.