Day on, Punjab govt’s doorstep helpline ‘inaccessible’, residents fume

Archit Watts

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Muktsar, December 11

A day after Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal launched the ‘Bhagwant Mann Sarkar, Tuhade Dwaar’ scheme from Ludhiana to provide 43 citizen-centric services to people on their doorstep across the state, local residents today complained that despite repeated attempts, they couldn’t make a successful call to the helpline number ‘1076’.

Ankush Deep, a resident, said: “I was very excited to know about the scheme launched yesterday by the government. However, when I dialled the helpline number ‘1076’, the customer care executives were busy and my call was disconnected every time, with a voice recording saying that ‘the number you are trying is temporarily out of service’. I made four attempts and all of them failed.”

Another resident, Deepak Kumar said: “I could not make a single call to the number. Whenever I dialled it, I got the same response: “you have insufficient balance to make calls, please recharge immediately”. However, I am able to make all other phone calls and there is no balance issue in my phone number.”

To corroborate the facts, this reporter also tried to make a call to ‘1076’ from different phone numbers but could not get success despite multiple attempts.

Another resident, Jagjit Singh, had a different experience. He said: “It took me three minutes to connect to the customer care executive. However, my experience was good and I got an appointment schedule for the residence certificate. The executive was very polite.”

A government official said the problem might have been occurring due to multiple phone calls at the same time.

The state government had drastically reduced the number of Sewa Kendras in the state recently and the doorstep service delivery system might prove helpful to the public.

For some, a good experience

It took me three minutes to connect to the customer care executive. However, my experience was good and I got an appointment schedule for the residence certificate. The executive was very polite. — Jagjit Singh, resident