NEW DELHI, May 24: Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma had a first-hand experience of an ordinary citizen plight while making an electricity complaint. For the second time this year the Chief Minister went on surprise raids to various DVB complaint centres on Saturday.
However, his tour to the Shahdara and Nand Nagri areas was an eye-opener both for him and senior DVB officials, including Chairman Navin Chawla, who accompanied him.
For instance, at complaint centre 2,202 in Navin Shahdara, only six complaints had been recorded in the register by 9 p.m., the first one being recorded at 5.30 p.m.. ``The system here is completely faulty,'' the Chief Minister said to the assembled media persons and DVB officials. He pointed out the fact that neither the time of the complaints nor the action taken on it had been recorded. ``Proper guidelines for recording complaints should be formed and the employees should be apprised of these guidelines,'' he added.
One of the residents of the area, who had come to the complaint centre, N.K. Gulati said: ``We had no electricity in our house since the morning. It came briefly for half-an-hour and then went out again. Even last night, the light was off from 8.30 p.m. to 1 a.m.'' Residents also complained that the complaint centre was locked up in the night. ``The electricity went off in our area late in the night, but when we came to complain they had already locked it up and gone home.''
The Chief Minister then went to the complaint centre number 2,203 in the Jhilmil industrial area in Nand Nagri. Incidentally, the centre was pitch dark as the employees said load-shedding was in progress. He found that 30 complaints had been registered since the beginning of the day. However, for the few minutes for which the Chief Minister was there, three complaints came in, none of which were recorded in the register.
