By A Staff Reporter

Times of India, September 28, 1998

The Brihandmumbai municipal corporation (BMC) has formed a Citizen's Charter in liaison with Praja, a non-governmental organisation, to provide Mumbaiites with important information about the various departments of the corporation.

"Through this charter, citizens will be able to get information on how and where to lodge a complaint if they are unsatisfied with the services provided by the BMC,"  said a spokesperson of Praja.  The charter, a brainchild of Praja, has been chalked out on the same lines as the charter a brainchild of Praja.  The charter, a brainchild of Praja, has been chalked out on the same lines as the charter that was introduced by John Major in Britain in 1996.  "This is the first time a governmental body has worked so closely with citizen's groups to develop a user friendly charter," said Nitar Mehta, a member of Praja.

In a workshop held by Praja on Saturday, ward officers, civic officials and members of the Dignity Foundtion were invited to discuss the Citizen's Charter.  "While formulating the charter, we realised that citizens and civic officials can work together to resolve the problems they face.  The motive behind conducting the workshop is to simplify the interaction between officials and citizens,"  said Mr Mehta.  "Instead of viewing them as problem solvers, the BMC is often made out to be the cause of the problems," pointed out Praja spokespersons.

As part of the workshop, prominent personalities from different career fields were invited to address civic officials on the bureaucratic problems faced by the common man and on how best to tackle the complainants.  "Civic officials can elicit a better response from the general public if they adopt a more customer-friendly approach," pointed out Ujjwal Siriah, who works on the corporate human resource department of the Taj Mahal hotel.

However, Geeta Shah of Tata Institute of Social Sciences said that, "Many members of the public lack civic sense, they shirk their responsibility and expect the BMC to clean up the mess they make."   She added that the public should realise where their duties begin and where the BMC's ends  while civic officials seemed a little skeptical of the charter, they welcomed the discussion and inputs from members of the Dignity Foundation who have been working with the corporation since January this year to clean up the city streets.