Lokmat News Network
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
Citizens visiting the municipal corporation’s zone offices for Birth and Death certificates are being harassed for extremely trivial and unnecessary documents. After creating obstacles, both contractual and permanent employees demand money. On Friday, a contractual employee from Zone 5 was caught red-handed accepting a bribe of ₹500 from a photocopy shop worker. This incident has once again exposed the ongoing bribery racket in the B&D certificate section. Shockingly, it has also come to light that some zone officers are supporting this malpractice!.
The newspaper Lokmat has repeatedly published a series of reports demanding that the process for issuing birth and death certificates be simplified and made citizen-friendly. Yet, there is absolutely no improvement in the functioning of the zone offices. If a citizen applies for a birth or death certificate today, they are told to come back after two months. In reality, according to rules, the certificate must be issued within eight days. Even after two months, the certificate is often not ready, and citizens are asked to complete the documents.
Even after all documents are submitted, people are asked to bring receipts for property tax or water tax. Citizens begin to feel frustrated and confused about why such unrelated documents are being demanded. The harassment doesn’t end here. Once the certificate is prepared, citizens must wait several more days for the signature of senior officials. For those who need the certificate urgently, a ‘separate system’ is in place in every ward office, essentially a setup for bribery. The anti-corruption bureau (ACB) exposed this illegal system in Zone 5 on Friday.
Spelling corrections: another hassle
Some certificates contain spelling errors that are noticed only years later. These errors can easily be corrected at the ward level. However, ward officers send the file to the Health section ‘for guidance.’ Only after receiving a positive remark from the health section is the corrected certificate issued. This type of harassment is found to be most common in Zones 2, 5, 6, and 9.