Chief minister Naveen Patnaik launches the grievance redressal system in Bhubaneswar on Friday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 26: An interactive grievance redress system called Samadhan was put in place for Koraput by the state government in association with the United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC) and two civil society organisations of Koraput today.

While the launching this first-of-its-kind interactive website from UNMC to facilitate citizens’ participation to ensure transparency and address public grievances, chief minister Naveen Patnaik asked officials to attend and address grievance hearings every week so that people of the weaker sections may benefit. Orissa, in fact, is the first state in India to launch the People’s Assessment of Health, Education and Livelihood (Paheli) in its 30 districts to ensure better health.

Samadhan is a pilot platform for citizen monitoring and tracking for millennium development goal (MDG) services. Even a citizen or researcher who wants data on the work of different welfare programmes under panchayati raj, rural development, food and civil supplies, district social welfare office, education department, total sanitation campaign, public health and family welfare departments can avail such data from the website koraput.samadhan.org.in. If the pilot project runs successfully, it will be replicated in other districts and states. With Koraput, the programme will also be in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh simultaneously, UN sources said.

After logging on to the website, one can go to specific departmental links to file one’s complaint, for example, not getting job cards, money and problems with food supply, poor sanitation services and health care cover and so on. Where there are no computers, complainants may dial 1077 locally or send an SMS to 94375-82015 and the complaint will be registered. Once the complaint is registered, they will be addressed by the department concerned.

Although the platform is open to the public, a department cannot open the complaint of another department. But senior officials such as district collectors or even citizens can open all the related links. After redress of the complaints, the person will also get an SMS.

State information commissioner Jagadananda said the system would help to solve grievance redress in a time-bound manner. He also urged the state government to implement the Public Service Guarantee (PSG) Act in the state to ensure better public service and accountability in Orissa.

Caitlin Wiesen, resident representative of United Nations Development Programme, India, said: “The public service surveillance system will help ensure better de-centralised planning process through initiatives like Samadhan. It will also proven effective, as a collage of community participation and technology platform have come as a helping hand in solving people’s grievances.”

Corinne Woods, director, UN Millennium Campaign, New York, Minar Pimple, regional director, Asia-Pacific, UN Millennium Campaign, Bangkok, Koraput district collector Sachin R. Jhadav and chief of field office, Unicef, Orissa, Shairose Mawji spoke at the programme.