Vij mayor launches phone-in prog to reach out to residents

Vijayawada: Vijayawada

mayor

Rayana Bhagya Lakshmi has turned her attention to addressing key civic issues in the city.

Bhagya Lakshmi, who was criticised by opposition parties as an ‘accidental mayor’, has decided to give a strong reply to her detractors by launching a phone-in initiative ‘Dial your Mayor’ to address civic issues.

A majority of corporators newly elected to the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (

VMC

) are first-timers and lack adequate knowledge about their role and responsibility in addressing civic problems.

While Bhagya Lakshmi is also a first-time elected corporator, the mayor has decided to focus on understanding the core issues faced by the city’s residents and is also verifying records of long-pending projects. Bhagya Lakshmi has been conducting inspections of development works and ongoing projects every day as an attempt to increase her understanding of civic issues.

Part of this effort includes directly interacting with residents over the phone and resolving their problems. “Our motive is to make the city more liveable and pleasant. We will give equal priority to welfare and development. Addressing civic issues is our top priority and we will strengthen the grievance redressal mechanism,” Bhagya Lakshmi said.

“We are conducting field trips and awareness programmes for the newly-elected corporators for their better understanding of various functions of the civic body,” she added.

Along with the call centre, a WhatsApp-based helpline will be functioning from the command control centre as residents want a more effective way to resolve their problems, such as road repair work, cleaning out garbage, water leakage, poor sanitation, drain cleaning, building plan approvals and other issues. We will try to address these through ‘Dial your Mayor’, Bhagya Lakshmi said.

Residents can speak to the mayor and senior officials over the phone by calling 0866-2421001 between 10 am to 11 am every Monday. The ‘Dial your Commissioner’ programme conducted earlier stands cancelled.