Corporation eyes volunteer engagement through snazzy command centre

Speaking about the service, a senior Corporation official said, “Various civic service departments, such as Metro Water, Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) and many others will be integrated into the single online platform, allowing citizens to have access all the services that support the city. The Command Centre will also monitor the projects and Smart City initiatives and the real-time tracking of the progress will be updated on this online platform.” 

The Centre also has another crucial function – to effectively help the civic body liaison with citizen volunteers. “The Centre will also have information about citizen involvement. The network of volunteers – including individuals, resident welfare associations, NGOs or students – will be updated on this forum. The volunteers will be linked with Corporation officials at the ward level. They will be contacted via SMS or other means and will be invited for a meeting with the engineering team at the ward level. This way, there can be better engagement with the public and make them solve civic issues,” added the official. 

For residents, who have been actively involved in highlighting civic issues, this is a helpful service, felt Ganga Sridhar, a software engineer. An office-bearer of Raja Street Residents Welfare Association, Ganga added, “We had our local Corporation office calling us for a meeting to find out the requirements of the people, before making proposals for the budget. We did lay down our requests. However, we don’t know the fate of our requests. If this centre helps ensure transparency, it will be a boon to citizens,” she added.

Social activist Jayaram Venkatesan wondered if this centre would achieve anything new. “The Corporation has to suo motu publish information as per Section 4 of the Right to Information Act. However, many details are not up on the website. The grievance redressal mechanism is currently hooked to the phone number 1913 and the website. We have filed complaints on the Corporation website over the last few months and noticed that the issues are not being solved speedily. Unless they become accountable to existing grievance redressal mechanism, I don’t see the new service achieving anything,” concluded the activist.