Call centre for Coimbatotre Residence - Corporation's Grievance Centre

City residents of Coimbatore has one more reason to be happy about. There is a Call Centre open, for grievance redress of the Corporatioin,  with the efforts of our Corporation and Anshul Mishra, Commissioner.

Public can dial 0422-2334455 (with STD code) to reach the new grievance.

City residents can now directly dial the corporation's grievance centre. They will be assisted by trained call centre employees, who will ensure that the complaints are registered with the proper department.
The corporation also plans to incorporate a bulk sms gateway to send notification to corporation tax defaulters to registered residents. The unified grievance centre will be inaugurated on Friday and a special training session conducted for corporation officials.

Local IT firm, KGISL, has been outsourced the task of handling the grievance calls.
"The system is expected to enhance the grievance redress of the corporation. The new unified centre will be located on the ground floor of the main corporation office building near Town Hall," said Anshul Mishra.

As of now the corporation is dealing with more than 100 grievances on weekly grievance days while the offices of the mayor and the commissioner receive about 40 petitions on other days. The unified grievance system will compile and store all grievance petitions received over the phone and track follow up action.
"Action taken by officials will be recorded and senior officials can track and assess its progress," said Jayaraman, deputy commissioner, coimbatore corporation.

Grievances can also be emailed to the unified grievance centre equipped with integrated voice response system (IVRS), which is being set up at a cost of over `35 lakhs. The grievance centre will guide the callers either in Tamil or English. The pending property tax and water charges will also be available to the callers through the system.

Man held for dumping waste in lake

Amid rising concern over environmental pollution in Coimbatore, city police have arrested a 20-year-old employee of a restaurant for allegedly dumping garbage in the Valankulam lake in the city.

An employee of a popular restaurant in Gandhipuram, S Thangaraj (20), was caught red-handed as he dumped restaurant garbage into the Valankulam canal on late Friday evening, police said. A police team from Race Course police station who were on patrol duty near the canal picked him up and took him to the station.

"Our police team caught him as he was dumping the waste into the canal," said TH Ganesan, inspector, Race Course police station. Thangaraj was booked under section 277 of the Indian Penal Code for polluting public spring or reservoir and rendering it unfit for public usage.' If convicted, he can be sentenced to a jail term of three months or slapped with a penalty of `500 or both. The accused has now been let off on bail.

Once a clean, shimmering lake and a home to migratory birds, the Valankulam lake has now turned into a dumping site for construction debris, untreated sewage and garbage. Maintenance of eight city lakes including Valankulam was recently handed over to the city corporation by the Public Works Department. The corporation has mooted a `127 crore proposal to privatise the maintenance of the lakes and convert them to tourist spots, triggering objections from environmentalists who insist that wetlands should not be used for entertainment.

Surrounded by greenery and forests, Coimbatore has been witnessing protests from its eco-conscious residents over felling of trees and dumping of waste in wetlands. In a landmark ruling to save greenery in the city, the civil court in its order on February 24 asked a city resident, who had cut down trees in an apartment complex, to pay a fine of Rs 12,000 and plant 40 saplings in the city.