Grievance Redressal Mechanism

Defining a Grievance:  A grievance is any type of unresolved complaint, whether genuine or imagined, legitimate or silly, rated or unvoiced, written or oral.

Grievance Redressal Mechanism in India:  

National Level: 

• Public complaints are received at several places in the Government of India’s Ministries and Departments. However, the Union Government has two designated nodal institutions that deal with these complaints. These organisations are: 

⇒ Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances.

⇒ Directorate of Public Grievances, Cabinet Secretariat.

State Level:

• A public-grievance cell is usually found in the Chief Minister’s office.
• Some Chief Ministers hold public hearings on a regular basis and use electronic media to listen to and respond to public complaints.

District Level: 

• At the district level, the District Public Grievance Officer is usually the District Magistrate.
• In several states, Zila Panchayats have been established as public grievance procedures.

For corruption complaints: Institutional mechanisms like the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and the Lokayuktas look into public servants’ complaints of corruption made by the people.

Ombudsman: Many organisations, for example, the Reserve Bank of India, have set up Ombudsman to look into grievances.

For complaints of marginalised sections: National and state human rights commissions, national and state women’s commissions, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes all look into public complaints in respective jurisdictions.

Analysis of the Existing Public Grievance System in Government of India: 

The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances commissioned a study

to look into the Union Government’s public grievance redressal system. The following are some of the findings:

• Meeting less day: Ministries and departments have been directed to set aside one meeting-free day every week in order to enhance public contact. Most firms, on the other hand, are utterly unaware of this directive.
• Public Grievance Cells: Public Grievance Cells have not been adequately empowered and suffer from the staff shortage and resources.
• Suo-motu redressal actions: Despite clear instructions on the matter, several Ministries/Departments fail to notice or note public grievances appearing in newspapers for suo-moto redressal steps.
• Awareness among people: Generally, people are not aware that a redressal system exists in many government departments. If people are aware of it, they have complained against harassment, waste of time and money, repeated visits to offices, etc.
• Non-settlement of staff and public grievances result in the filing of petitions in the courts on petty issues, leading to our judicial system’s overburdening.

Recommendations: 

Analysis and Identify Grievance Prone Areas:

• Government organisations should proactively engage in a rigorous and periodic exercise to identify the grievance prone areas and processes.
• Then the government can take corrective measures to eliminate the underlying reason for the generation of grievances.

Comprehensive grievance redressal mechanism: The grievance redressal

mechanism should exist to address: 

• Public grievances; and
• Grievances of staff members.

Give statutory backing:  The Public Grievance Redressal Mechanism should be included in the Right to Information Act of 2005 as a statutory provision. As a result, all organisations would be required to pursue the complaint until it was resolved.

Designate public grievance officers: All public entities must designate public grievance officers in accordance with Union and State Government directives. It should follow the guidelines established by the RTI Act for Public Information Officers.

Prompt disposal of grievances:

• Fix time limits: These officers should satisfactorily dispose of all grievance petitions within thirty days. The officer will face financial penalties if he fails to adhere to the time limit.
•  Hold Lok Adalats/Staff Adalats for quicker disposal of grievances.
• Change in attitude through Reward and punishment: Change in public servants’ attitude towards redressal of public grievances by rewarding good work and punishing the deliberate negligence.

• Increase awareness among people: Grievance Redressal Mechanism should be well publicised.

• Meeting less day: Ministries and departments should set aside one day per week for no meetings so that they can address public issues.

• Suo-motu redressal actions: Pick up on complaints that emerge in newspaper columns and respond to them in a timely manner.
• Build trust: Citizens must have faith that they will get justice from them. Thus deal with every grievance in a fair, objective and just manner.