KMC as byword for corruption, Citizen charter thrown to winds

Khammam: The citizen charter in Khammam Municipal Corporation, which had been introduced to deliver services to the public in a time-bound manner and without corruption, is malfunctioning. No application is being moved in engineering and revenue wings --like revenue, town planning and engineering departments --until the applicant met the concerned officials and satisfied them “by all means.” It had been promised that Issues relating to sanitation, grant of trade licences, house construction permission and birth and death certificates can be solved or obtained through the citizen charter services. Instead of repeatedly going to the KMC office and wait for hours there, applicants have the option to pay “some money” and get things done via the backdoor. Nearly 2517 applications for permissions have been settled by the town-planning department vis-a-vis house construction in the last two years. Eighty per cent of the issues were settled after the applicants met the “demands” from the greedy officials.