IAC Mumbai launches helpline for commuters

Hoping to bring relief to commuters’ grievances, India Against Corruption (IAC) Mumbai launched a grievance redressal mechanism on Thursday.

Hoping to bring relief to commuters’ grievances, India Against Corruption (IAC) Mumbai launched a grievance redressal mechanism on Thursday.

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While currently the mechanism caters only to complaints against auto rickshaw drivers, it would soon be extended to cover taxis, state transport (ST) and Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) buses and traffic cops, who wrongly trouble public and auto drivers.

“We are working on the coding for taxi and local bus services. We will also give platform to auto and taxi drivers to put complaints against the public, traffic and regional transport authority (RTO) officials,” said Praful Vora, IAC Mumbai volunteer.

“The software would be extended to all government and civic-related services. Each request or complaint will be associated with a keyword, such as ‘BribeDemand’, ‘LightRepair’, ‘OutOfTurn’, etc. Gradually we will include civic-related services like garbage collection, huge queue in water bill payment, to get death or birth certificate, drainage issues, streetlight repair, etc,” said Mayank Gandhi, IAC Mumbai co-ordinator.

While the complaints will be forwarded to the concerned department, the decision of taking action would be with the respective department. “We will follow up with the concerned department and ensure that they resolve maximum complaints but if complete inaction is noticed, protests against the respective department will be held,’ said Preeti Menon, IAC volunteer.

In the first few hours, the auto rickshaw complaint campaign launched by IAC Mumbai received around 50 complaints, which were a mix of fare refusal and excess fare.