MoRTH to Appoint Officers for Addressing Public Complaints, Sharing Response & Action-taken Reports

The ministry of road transport and highways will now have officers who will be dealing with public grievances and track news reports at the same time. An order was issued last week asking for the appointment of nodal officers in each region, who can act on complaints and provide updates to “make the system more effective” and “create a good image of the ministry”.

In its order, the ministry said this was in continuation of an earlier order where regional offices of MoRTH (ministry of road transport and highways), National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) were asked to set up social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Koo.

The newly appointed nodal officers will be tracking grievances, complaints and news reports, and then share their response and action-taken reports. “…To make the response system more effective, the ROs/EDs are directed to depute a nodal officer for their respective region, who will coordinate with the media team at (the) ministry, check the grievances/complaints/news reports being sent and then share the approved response/action taken with them which may subsequently also be amplified through MoRTH’s social media handles,” the order stated.

The order further stated that the entire exercise is aimed at creating “a good image of the ministry, of being responsive and sensitive towards people’s concerns and difficulties”.

The order was necessitated as the minister’s office had earlier directed regional offices to suitably address public grievances on social media. But the regional officers were “not responding quickly to such grievances/news reports. As a result, the factual status is not getting propagated to the public at large”.

A ministry official told News18 that these steps were crucial as people were raising complaints on social media but despite the ministry resolving these issues, they kept reflecting over and over again showing as unresolved.

“But if we respond to the social media post about the action we have taken, it will be there as long as the complaint exists. So, others will know that the required action has been taken by the ministry,” the official said on condition of anonymity.