VIJAYAWADA: Residents of the city can now directly interact with the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) authorities on the social networking site of Facebook for redressal of civic services-related grievances, according to VMC commissioner G Veerapandian.
He told Express here Tuesday that the civic administration had recently launched the official page of VMC and that several residents had already started using the VMC Facebook page to air their grievances and get them redressed immediately. The Facebook page allowed the residents of Vijayawada to freely interact with the VMC authorities, air their grievances and also post suggestions regarding developmental activities in the city to make Vijayawada a ‘Smart City’, he added.
“To maintain a direct rapport with the people, we have decided to become active on the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter by creating pages with the name ‘Vijayawada Municipal Corporation’, where people can freely post their complaints and can also give suggestions for development of the city,” he explained.
The commissioner said the civic body proposed to set up a special team which would monitor Facebook and refer the people’s problems to the head of the department concerned and update the solutions on the page. “As of now, we don’t have a special online team, especially for this purpose, and the IT wing of the VMC has been tasked with checking the Facebook account and pass on the messages to the concerned sections of the corporation. Now, the people can even share their ideas directly with me on Twitter,” he said.
It is learnt that more than 30 people are following the VMC Facebook Page and that a few have already posted their grievances regarding poor sanitation and dog menace in their colonies. “In our area, the street dog menace is very high and our repeated complaints have not elicited any response from the VMC”, posted by Ch Srikanth, a resident of Suryaraopet.