Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has directed government officials to open offices that act as windows to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) in each of the state’s 23 districts, state Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema told ThePrint Monday.
“The idea is that people who have grievances and problems that they think can be resolved only through the CMO do not have to travel all the way to state capital Chandigarh, where the CMO is located in the secretariat building,” Cheema said. “They can instead file their grievance in their own districts.”
The initiative — which has been named ‘e-solutions’ — was taken by Mann Sunday after he visited his own constituency, Dhuri, for the first time since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the assembly polls on 10 March, a senior government officer said.
Elaborating on the initiative, the officer, who did not wish to be identified, told ThePrint: “Nodal officers will be appointed in every CMO window in the districts. These officers will not report to the district administration but will report directly to the CMO at the Punjab Secretariat in Chandigarh.”
According to the officer, each CMO window will be equipped with computers, printers and scanners. The nodal officers will have to ensure that, for each matter received in those windows, scanned documents are sent to the CMO in Chandigarh at the earliest. In Chandigarh, the matter will be taken up by senior officers.
“People can always approach MLAs in their region for their problems, but the government regularly sees a large number of people arriving in the Chandigarh secretariat with problems ranging from job- and crop-related matters to civic issues,” the official added.
It is not that such a thing is happening after the AAP government came to power, but this trend has always existed, the official said.
“It is rather surprising that previous governments did not implement such an idea. It will cause convenience to people of Punjab. They will save fuel and a day’s wage,” he pointed out, adding that the Mann government plans to launch the initiative within a month.
A second senior officer said that, over the past one month, since the AAP took over, the CMO has particularly received a large number of requests and complaints from people seeking government jobs.
Over the last 10 days, said the first government officer, the CM visited multiple districts across Punjab to review wheat procurement arrangements. “During his conversation with villagers in this time, this issue surfaced several times,” said the officer.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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