Bhubaneswar, Aug. 10: The inclusion of the development authority's services under the umbrella of "My City, My Pride" mobile application will take some more time as all the BDA employees are yet to own smart phones.
The My City My Pride App is an interactive platform where residents can lodge their grievances against the civic issues.
The mobile application (App) project was launched on March 9 for the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation's services. Later, the authorities announced that the service would also include the grievance redress of water supply, sewerage and services under the Bhubaneswar Development Authority.
"We are staying in a colony developed by the authority in 1999. But, our grievances, lodged last year, are yet to be redressed even though we have attended the joint redress session on many Mondays since March 10 last. We wanted to post it on the App, but there is no service link by the development authority," said general secretary of the Prachi Enclave Residents' Welfare Association Chandramani Behera.
BDA vice-chairman-cum-municipal commissioner Krishan Kumar told TheTelegraph: "We have prepared a platform for launching the service. All details about our parks, links regarding the grievance types and the process to register complaints on encroachments are also in place. We just need to integrate them with the entire mechanism."
Kumar said that to cover the grievances regarding the development authority's services, all staff members needed to have smart phones, but till date, many were yet to own them.
While the water supply under the public health engineering organisation has already been integrated in the system, along with grievance redress of street lights, solid waste and sewerage, services on parks, encroachments and colonies under the BDA are yet to appear on the App.
Similar is the case with the public health service. It is plagued with poor redress as its grassroots-level employees are yet to have smart phones. The public health looks after pipe water supply and maintenance of the old sewerage lines in the city.
The civic authorities are also planning to have the grievance mechanism of power supply integrated with the App and a portal with the same name in future.
But, Behera did not accept the explanation. "Almost every urban individual now possesses smart phones. Either the employees are not smart enough to adopt the technology or they fear that they have to remain vigilant to redress the problems," he said.
The My City My Pride App, by virtue of its grievance application and redress integration, has drawn attention of other city administrations as well. Jamshdpur Utilities and Services Company Limited, popularly known as Jusco, has also weighing options if a similar model can fit into its existing 24X7 grievance redress mechanism.
The App is also integrated with a website. A complaint filed through the App is also gets displayed on the website and vice-versa.
At present, the smart phone App is available in two versions - Android and Windows phones. Shortly, it will be available on the iPhone operating system - iOS platform.
The municipal corporation has also got another option - a WhatsApp number, 94374-96950, on which the residents can lodge grievances.
