Bhubaneswar, Feb. 21: The municipal corporation's mobile-based application (App), "My City My Pride", which was launched in 2014 to ensure public participation in the civic affairs, has left residents more disappointed than satisfied.
The app had initially received good response as it was directly connecting the residents with the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. However, various technical and administrative glitches that have cropped up over the last few months have taken the sheen away from it.
"I downloaded this App shortly after it was launched by the BMC in 2014. It was a good initiative, but there are many technical glitches that need to be fixed as soon as possible," said Padmalaya Mahanta, a homemaker.
Mahanta said that she had complained of dumping of garbage in the backyard of her house at Niladri Vihar for which the civic officials are yet to take corrective steps.
According to another user, Baibav Agarwal, the App can't update the users' location. "I thought of contributing to the clean city initiative and lodged complaints, but none were resolved," he said.
Sushree Ankita, a student, also said that the service was irregular. "I try my best to help the officials to keep the city clean. I often report about illegal dumping of garbage, non-functioning of streetlights, over-flowing drains and many other issues. Some of them were solved in quick times, but many weren't, especially those in distant areas. I think the civic officials are focusing more on the primary locations of the city, rather than distant places."
The civic body, however, passed the buck of technical glitches to the App developer, while claiming that they were doing their best to address all users' grievances. "Our ground-level officials are taking quick steps to resolve the complaints made by residents of different areas in the city. However, we cannot deal with the technical glitches that the people are complaining of. The developer is supposed to look into it. We have deputed workers to solve other complaints," said a corporation official.
Manoj Kumar Sahu, another student, however, also urged the civic authorities to fix the App's technical issues. "The municipal corporation should make the application more user-friendly and fix the technical issues, such as smooth tracking of complaints and crash problems."
Another app user, Binaya Babu, has accused the corporation of cheating people in the name of the app. "I had registered a complaint and without solving it, the status says it was solved," the review reads.
More than 1,000 people have downloaded the application out of which a mere 95 have reviewed it. However, since most of the reviews are negative, Google has reported it inappropriate.
When contacted by The Telegraph, an official of the App developer that also looks after the technical aspect of the app, refused to comment on the technical problems.
Besides the App, the corporation also has a toll-free number and a web portal where people can lodge complaints. According to official records, the civic authority is yet to address 6,787 complaints lodged through calls, 1,261 through the mobile App and 748 through the web-portal. In the past one and a half years, it has been able to solve only 7,603 issues intimated by the citizens.
