Noida Dialogue

An initiative of Democratic Outreach for Social Transformation, DOST

Noida: Pollution board takes up complaints on Twitter

April 16, 2019

NOIDA: The Noida Authorityand the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board(UPPCB) have separately started addressing residents’ complaints related to pollution made through Twitter.

The general manager (projects) of Noida Authority, Rajeev Tyagi, said they have been scanning tweets posted over the past two months and taking action accordingly. “We have started scanning Twitter for the past two months and more and more complaints are now coming through the platform. We try to reply as soon as possible and an officer at the level of chief engineer handles all the queries,” he said.

The regional officer of UPPCB, Anil Singh, also confirmed that Twitter complaints are now being treated as official. “We get pollution related complaints on a daily basis and try and mitigate them as soon as possible. However, some complaints can’t be addressed immediately and not all complaints are valid as well,” he said.

Amit Gupta, a resident of Noida who has been actively posting complaints about roads, dust pollution and other such issues, said that most of his complaints on Twitter get addressed by the agencies. “Noida Authority has now started keeping a dossier of Twitter based complaints and they have shared the details of the citizens’ complaints addressed by them,” he said.

Meanwhile, the residents of Noida Extension filed a complaint with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday and also held a meeting with the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA) about dust pollution in the area. The residents claimed that the pollution has been on the rise due to negligent builder activity, broken roads and inadequate water sprinkling at the construction sites.

Commenting on their meeting, Narendra Bhooshan, the CEO of GNIDA, said, “Residents had some specific complaints related to roads and pollution and we have assured them that they would be addressed accordingly.”

Source : The Times of India