Bhubaneswar, Aug. 27: The grievance cell of the municipal corporation is at the receiving end as complaints keep piling up against the forum’s ineffectiveness.

In an irony of sorts, members of the Prachi Enclave Welfare Association had to visit the municipal corporation office on August 25 as their complaints lodged with the grievance cell on March 10 were not resolved.

Between March 10 and August 25, the civic body has received 267 applications for grievance redress, but so far only 19 have been solved.

Prachi Enclave residents had complained on March 10 that potholed roads, damaged drains and the unattended electrical poles were putting the residents in great trouble.

On hearing their grievance, the civic authorities had assured them that steps would be taken to start repair and maintenance work. However, nearly five months after the assurance nothing has been done for them.

“When we first visited the corporation, the civic authorities had told us that there was some issue over the ownership of the roads as the colony was built by the Bhubaneswar Development Authority in 1999. Once the land details of the road and the status of the electrical poles are submitted, only then can the civic body take up the work,” said Chandramani Behera, secretary of the association.

Behera, who is a development officer with the Life Insurance Corporation of India, said: “We were given an impression that as both the development authority and the corporation are government agencies the land transfer will not take time. But, why it has been pending for the past five months still remains a mystery to us.”

The corporation’s executive engineer (division-II) R.N. Mallick said: “We have no knowledge about the status of the land on which the roads stand. Unless we do not know the actual status of the land, we cannot carry out any repair or maintenance.”

Another civic body official said that in case of land transfer and utility services such as street lights, the development authority has to give all detailed data in an inventory.

“We are not in possession of the land details of the BDA colony. We can start the work when we get the papers.”

Nayapalli resident Sushanta Sekhar Mohanty, 55, visited the grievance redress session yesterday and complained about poor response of the authorities.

Mohanty said the stretch between Ekamrakanan gate and Biju Patnaik College remained dark at night, because there were no street lights. Though the assistant engineer (electrical) A.K. Behera said that the ongoing road construction and shifting of electrical poles were delaying the street light project, local residents said the corporation already owned the posts and it could do it even now.

Mohanty also said that on February 21 the pension and grievance department at a Mahasamadhan Sibir raised the issue and they came to the civic body on March 24, but the situation remained the same.

Duryodhan Nayak, 75, a senior citizen and former director of the housing and consolidation, said: “I have been making rounds to the corporation for the past 14 to 15 years for the construction of a road at Badagada Brit Colony, but nothing happened till date.”

Nayak said the grievance redress system had become a paper tiger with people making rounds without any benefit.

“I had been a senior government official, and during my job tenure, I never took any favour from the babus. But now, I often encounter personnel who are not ready to listen to our problems. If it can happen to me, just think about others,” said Nayak.

Nodal officer for grievance Subhranshu Sekhar Mishra said: “The grievances related to engineering construction need field visits, filing of reports, estimation of project cost, putting the things before the works standing committee for approval, green signal from land section, notification in newspaper in case private land is involved and tender processing. All these take months, so there is a delay due to the official procedures.”

Sources said that most of the complaints at the grievance redress forum were related to construction of roads and drains and street lights. As the city is growing fast and new areas are coming up, the civic body is finding it tough to meet the demands with its limited workforce.”