BBMP’s Sahaya 2.0 app is of no help, officials doing away with complaints, say citizens

BENGALURU: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) launched its Sahaya app with much fanfare, promising to ease its public grievances mechanism. But as the first version did not find many takers, it launched an improved second version.

Citizens can lodge civic complaints regarding potholes, bad roads, garbage issues, etc and post photographs along with the location.

Now, though thousands of complaints have been lodged, the BBMP seems to be quite eager to dispense with the complaints on flimsy grounds without even attending to the problems.

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Rajagopalan R, a resident of JP Nagar, has himself raised over 170 issues on the app. But he says the BBMP has not responded to even one of them or bothered to reply to him. As the number of complaints are rising, the Palike is only bothered about reducing their number without actually acting on them. This shows the lack of seriousness among officials, he rues.

“There is no centralised mechanism for grievance redressal. I have raised about 240 complaints, from building violations to garbage collection. About 170 complaints are still pending. There are some shortcoming with the Sahaya 2.0.

“Complaints are not being addressed but simply closed on some flimsy grounds like ‘rejected’, ‘non-relevant’, ‘long-term solution’. They just want the count to be brought to zero since there is a zonal audit going on. There is no accountability and there is dereliction of duty on the part of the officials,” Rajagopalan R noted.

The same is the situation in Jayanagar area where even complaints about basic civic needs are not attended to. The Sahaya app is of no use, says social worker Arun Prasad.

“There is no follow-up action or feedback mechanism. If people raise complaints, the officials don’t call or even visit the spot”, he says.