Chandigarh, August 17: In a bid to seamlessly provide citizen centric services to people across the state, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday launched a digital Public Grievance Redressal System (PGRS) as a one-stop web portal to address the grievances of citizens in a time-bound manner.
Launching the portal virtually during the Cabinet meeting, Captain Amarinder Singh said that the portal, conceived and developed by the Department of Governance Reforms and Public Grievances (DGR&PG), would go a long way towards digitizing processes related to the delivery of services across various departments. He also directed the Chief Secretary to encourage citizens to use this system and prevail upon the officers to use this excellent system to continue to strengthen Digital Punjab.
A spokesperson of the Chief Minister’s Office said the portal is aimed at boosting citizen-centric governance by leveraging the latest technology. Citizens can now submit their grievances to the concerned government departments for resolution at: connect.punjab.gov.in. All Departments have been onboarded and officials have been trained at headquarters in Chandigarh and the district level. They are prepared to receive the concerns of citizens and resolve them at the earliest.
Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan said that the PGRS would function as the central portal where all citizen grievances can be recorded by submission on the portal itself or by email, post, or in person at the Sewa Kendras.
Notably, the Council of Ministers has already approved the Policy on Public Grievance Redressal 2020, which mandates strict timelines for the resolution of grievances so that citizens get relief in a time bound manner.
Through the portal, citizens would also be able to track the status of their grievances online, and will be alerted by SMS at every step of the process as officers look into their concerns. When their grievance is resolved, citizens will receive phone calls and in case they are not satisfied, their grievance will go to higher authorities.
Meanwhile, Principal Secretary, Department of Governance Reforms and Public Grievances Alok Shekhar disclosed that DGR&PG has built dashboards for the monitoring of grievances at every level to ensure smooth functioning, from the district level up to the Chief Minister’s office. Citizens would be able to give their grievances at Sewa Kendras, DC offices, and soon, a call centre would also be established.
In the future, the government would utilize Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to make it simpler for citizens to use the system, and to check for duplicate or frivolous complaints. The Government intends to utilize the information gathered from the system to leverage big data analytics for formulating informed policies that strengthen public service delivery and increase public trust in the Government.
