Date:25/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/25/stories/2008112550570300.htm

Tamil Nadu

Collectorate needs people-friendly facilities

Staff Reporter

Limited chairs available at reception; no index board put up at entrance

— Photo: N. Bashkaran.

Inconvenience: Senior citizens from Sulagiri at the Krishnagiri Collectorate on Monday to submit petitions for pension.

KRISHNAGIRI: More than 15 senior citizens especially women came to the Collectorate from Sulagiri on Monday to submit their petitions seeking pension to Collector V.K. Shanmugam.

Many of them were aged above 65 with poor vision and hearing capacity. They were waiting in the long queue for more than two hours outside the grievances meeting hall where the Collector used to receive the petitions.

While aged people are getting special care in various Central and State governments’ public utility services, here they are treated like anybody else. They are made to stand in the queue as only limited chairs are available at the reception in the ground floor.

To submit a memorandum to the Collector, first they have to stand in a queue to get their petitions registered at the reception. Then they have to wait in another queue to submit the petitions to the Collector directly.

Sources in the grievances day petitions (GDP) department said that the department used to receive about 250 to 300 petitions every Monday, of which 40 per cent would be redressed on that day itself. Action would taken on the remaining petitions after getting detailed reports from the officers concerned.

The new Collectorate building was opened in February. But even after nine months nobody took steps to put up an index board at the entrance of the Collectorate, many visitors complain.

The Collectorate has in all 125 rooms in ground, first and second floor. In the ground floor, there are 44 rooms including the grievances day meeting hall, DIPR office, Elcot and other offices.

In the first floor, there are 44 rooms including the Collector’s chamber, chambers for his Personal Assistants for various departments, DRO’s chamber and small conference hall. Second floor has 35 rooms including the offices of the Project Officers of DRDA, Mahalir Thittam and District Panchayat Administration.

Though all the rooms are neatly numbered, locating them is very difficult in the absence of an index board, they say.