Mahabubnagar: People turning to district Collectorates as Prajavani neglected at mandal-level

Mahabubnagar: As the officials were not taking the public grievance redressal programme 'Prajavani' seriously at mandal headquarters across Mahabubnagar, many people were forced to visit tahsildar office to lodge their complaints. But as they were not getting any relief here also, they are approaching the district Collectorate to lodge their complaints to the Collector.

Redya Naik, a farmer from Tummal Kunta, who has a land issue, had approached Jadcherla Tahasildar office on many occasions and even lodged complaint with the Tahsildar. However, the issue got solved only after he took his complaint to the notice of District Collector at Prajavani.

Not just Redya Naik, there are many poor farmers, who are at dilemma as to where to approach to resolve issued related to their land and other welfare scheme. In fact, before Covid-19, mandal level officials used to conduct Prajavani seriously and that was monitored by the district administration heads and reviewed regularly. However, during Covid period, the Prajavani programme was put to halt due to fear of infection.

Post Covid, even though the Prajavani programme was held at the district collectorate and hundreds of people used to lodge their complaints. But now, many mandal level officials are citing some or the other reasons for not holding Prajavani. A few tahsildars said that they are regularly conducting the programme, but none was coming as majority prefer to go to district headquarters to lodge their complaints.

When enquired about not holding Prajavani at Jadcherla tahsildar office, Tahsildar Lakshmi Narayana said that as the officials concerned are busy with Podu land survey, they couldn't conduct the programme this week. However, he said, they will continue to hold the public grievance redressal from next week onwards.

Similarly, Devarkadra Tahsildar Jyothi said though they are regularly conducting Prajavani, they have not received a single complaint from people for the past many weeks. She observed that since Devarkadra is near to Mahabubnagar, many people prefer to go to district headquarters as they believe lodging complaint at Collector level gets their issue addressed immediately.

People particularly from villages urged higher authorities to make it mandatory for all Tahsildar offices to seriously hold Prajavani programme once in a week so that people can get a chance to lodge their complaint and even the officials can get ample time to go into the issue and resolve them at the earliest at the local level.