'Phone duty' in SDO, DSP, CO offices too

PATNA: How many times have you felt frustrated over government officials not taking your phone calls? "Umpteen times," you may say. But all that's going to be history with the state government on the job to "discipline" its officials.
The state personnel and administrative reforms department recently wrote a letter to all the divisional commissioners and district magistrates (DMs), giving them guidelines on how district officials should respond to such calls.
Arrangements should be made in the offices of sub-divisional officers, DSPs, block development officers, circle officers and officers-in-charge of police stations for taking phone calls. Class III and IV employees of these offices could be given this responsibility, the letter says.
Such a phone-duty system is currently maintained only in the offices of divisional commissioners, DMs, DIGs and SPs.
To ensure that the staff on phone duty behaves properly, the letter says s/he should be issued clear-cut directives in this regard. This apart, a system of maintaining call register has also to be introduced so that the officials, who might not have taken a call due to pre-occupations, may call back the caller once they are free.
If need be, the caller should be guided to the right official and his/her phone number given to the caller.
"The move is a part of the government's commitment to make the administration more sensitive towards common people," personnel and administrative reforms department personnel secretary Dipak Kumar told TOI.
He said, the department is not sitting idle after issuing the directives. To keep a tab on field officials, a control room has been set up at the state HQ. "Random phone calls are made from this control room to different offices in districts to check whether the directive of maintaining call register and responding properly to such calls is being followed or not," Kumar added.
Another instruction has been issued to the DMs and SP to reduce the gap between people and administration. The DMs and SPs have been directed to sit in their official chambers during office hours and not in the confidential offices which are generally housed in their residences.
People may face difficulty in meeting DMs and SPs if they work from their residential offices, says the letter.