By Manjima Dhakal

Kathmandu, Feb. 5: The government had launched Hello Sarkar, a complaint-hearing mechanism with an aim to improve service delivery to the general public, eight years ago. However, the complaints registered at Hello Sarkar desk indicate that common people are either unaware of the mechanism or desist from taking the trouble to lodge them.
Out of the total 1652 complaints registered at Hello Sarkar desk under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM), Signha Durbar so far in the current fiscal year, more than 1000 cases were registered through the Internet. Relatively fewer complaints have been registered through phone calls and through physical presence.
According to Hello Sarkar desk, it has received 454 complaints through twitter, 472 complaints through the website, 269 complaints through Facebook, 183 complaints through email, 326 complaints through phone, 16 complaints through Viber and 35 complaints through applications.
Amrit Rai, section officer of the Hello Sarkar desk, said as twitter users are considered as an intellectual section of the society and the largest number of complaints are received from twitter means that common people are still unaware of the complaint lodging mechanism.
Though all the complaints registered at Hello Sarkar are being addressed promptly, it has not been getting complaints from the general public, Rai added.
The common people could register complaints at Hello Sarkar through a website gunaso.opmcm.gov.np, Facebook and twitter by tagging Hello Sarkar, through a hotline 1111, by message and through fax.
Likewise, the number of complaints at Hello Sarkar has declined significantly in this fiscal year compared to the past year.
According to Hello Sarkar desk, it had received 10,002 complaints in the first seven months of the last fiscal year, but the complaints had dropped to 1,650 so far in the current fiscal year.
The desk said that last year it used to receive 40 to 50 complaints a day, but this year it has been receiving only 10 to 15 cases a day.
Yamlal Bhusal, spokesperson of the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM), said that the number of complaints dropped after the government started addressing public complaints through local levels.
With the beginning of the current fiscal year, all 753 local levels have been connected with the new software portal of ‘Hello Sarkar’ established under the OPMCM as a grievance-hearing mechanism, public grievances are also being addressed through the local levels, he added.
“The local levels have access to their ‘username’ and ‘password’. Complaints received in the name of Hello Sarkar are directly forwarded to the respective local levels for further action. Chief Administrative Officer and officials are assigned to listen to people’s complaints and execute them. Due to that, the number of complaints in the central level has decreased,” he added.
Although the Hello Sarkar desks are established also in the States, more complaints are received in the local levels than in the States.
However, Kiran Joshi, section officer at the Hello Sarkar desk, said that last year they had kept the record of all types of complaints but this year they were not registering weird questions and suggestions. “This year we are not registering them because it is very difficult to resolve them. Therefore, such questions are being forwarded to concerned bodies as a suggestion.”
“In such cases, the concerned bodies responding to them thank them for their suggestion; otherwise, all factual complaints are responded to quickly,” she said.
Hello Sarkar was established on November 3, 2011, when Dr. Baburam Bhattarai was leading the coalition government.