Siliguri civic body publishes report card of ‘Talk to Mayor’ initiative

siliguri: After a year of coming to power, for the very first time, the Trinamool Congress-run Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) board has published a report card on ‘Talk to Mayor’ campaign.

Mayor Gautam Deb released the report card in the presence of party councillors and the entire board on Monday.

According to municipal sources, this report card will be distributed to common people in the coming days. “It has been a little less than a year. All the shortcomings, complaints, demands and proposals that we received in the Talk to Mayor programme have been resolved. I will go to the people with this report card. I will also send it to the Opposition. Opposition parties do ‘Maan Ki Baat’, but no one is there to listen to the actual woes of the people,” remarked Mayor Gautam Deb.

According to municipal sources, the administrative board was at the helm of affairs for eight months in May 2021. At that time ‘Talk to Chairman’ was launched by Gautam Deb who was then the Chairman of Board of Administrators. After coming to power as the Mayor, he launched ‘Talk to Mayor’.

A total of 22 Talk to Mayor sessions took place in three stages from December 11, 2021, to December 3, 2022.

To resolve those issues a special team of officials and a device management team were formed from Kolkata. About 580 issues and complaints were raised during the period. A total of 522 people had called. About 60.51 per cent of total issues have been resolved and 146 are in process, which stands at 25 per cent. In total, 85.51 per cent of the problems have been addressed. About 56 per cent of the total grievances were received on PWD, conservancy, and building-related issues. This included 152 in the PWD and 101 in connection to the conservancy department.

As many as 112 complaints were received through WhatsApp. Among them, 84 have been resolved and 28 are in process.

Also, 24 complaints were received through the ‘Write to Mayor’ initiative, out of this 7 have been solved and 14 are in process of being resolved.