Praja Foundation, an NGO enabling accountable governance, has conducted a survey of citizens’ complaints registered with the BMC in the last ten years. The BMC’s Centralised Complaint Register System (CCRS) data shows that the number of complaints related to civic issues like road repairs, drainage, toilets, water supply, pest control and solid waste management (SWM) has decreased in the last two years.
In 2019, the number of complaints was 1.28 lakh, which dipped to 93,774 in 2020 and 90,250 in 2021.
However, the number of days to resolve the complaints by the BMC in these three years (2019, 2020 and 2021) rose from 30 days to 39 days and 48 days, respectively.
The CCRS is the collective database which records citizen grievances from all the BMC portals, including 24x7 MyBMC app, My Pothole Fixit app, BMC WhatsApp Chatbot and the Citizen’s Grievance Cell 1916.
The Praja Foundation report states that citizens’ complaints have been constantly increasing from 2015 to 2019. In 2015, there were 67,835 complaints, which rose to 1,28,145 in 2019. L-Ward Kurla took the highest number of days (68) to resolve each civic complaint from 2017-21. Subsequently, from 2012-21, maximum complaints have been registered in Kurla (74,7078), Andheri (73,562) and Andheri East (66,660).
Praja report also states that 1,50,831 complaints were registered for drainage related issues in the last 10 years wherein Andheri West had maximum 14,687 complaints. Furthermore, 96,360 complaints in the last 10 years were related to SWM, but Andheri West had maximum SWM 7,195 complaints and 92,858 complaints were related to water. Govandi and Mankhurd areas had a maximum 9,541 complaints related to water.
Water and SWM related complaints have increased from 7 per cent in 2012 to 12 per cent in 2021. Drainage related complaints have always been one of the highest since 2012. Complaints related to toilets were 148 in 2012, and 489 in 2021, while pest control related complaints were 3,123 in 2012 and 7,785 in 2021. The BMC CCRS recorded 269 pollution related complaints in 2019, which eventually increased to 424 in 2021.
The ward wise analysis shows that the highest number of per-capita complaints were registered from the A ward (Marine Drive, Cuffe Parade) followed D ward (Malabar Hills, Kemp's Corner) and C ward (Bhuleshwar, Kalbadevi)
Milind Mhaske, the CEO of Praja Foundation said, “To effectively provide and improve service delivery, the complaints data should be accessible to all in an open government data portal so citizens can track and view other issues.” He said complaints should be resolved on time according to the citizen’s charter and ensure a detailed action taken report is generated.
