namhhr recommendations on national grievance redressal bill

7/31/2019 NAMHHR Recommendations on National Grievance Redressal Bill

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To,

Shri K.P.Singh,Director,

Rajya Sabha Secretariat,201, Second Floor, Parliament House Annexe,New Delhi 110001

Date: 24 February 2012

Subject: Memoranda on the National Grievance Redress Bill, 2011 to

Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law

and Justice

Dear Sir,

Greetings from the NAMHHR!

The National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights

(NAMHHR) is a civil society Alliance that works on strengthening rights-

based approaches for preventing maternal mortality and promoting the

highest quality of maternal health for the marginalized in India.


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The NAMHHR recognizes the need to develop strong rights based strategies to build greater

accountability for the tens of thousands of preventable maternal deaths that are occurring in our

country each year. The Alliance currently has members from eleven states of India, as well

as expert advisors working with research, Right to Food, public health, right to medicines and

budget accountability.

We are pleased that the Government has drafted the National Grievance Redress Bill, 2011 and

has invited comments on it from civil society. A grievance redress bill is essential, especially in

the health sector, to ensure the sustainability and efficiency of the health sector in order to

achieve the transformation goals planned by the Government. This becomes all the more

important as there is an urgent need to effect transformation of the national health system in a

co-operative, constructive and mutually beneficial relationship in such a manner as to reflect the

diversity and meet the various health care needs of the total population.

Given this scenario NAMHHR strongly recommends the following additions to the Bill:

1. It is extremely important that a systematic and responsive grievance redress and informationmechanism for citizens exists at the block level which will enable citizens to access knowledge

and claim their health entitlements. This mechanism is needed to deal with confidential

complaints and grievances about public and private health services in a particular block.

2. Procedures for corrective measures should be clearly enunciated at each level with definedparameters for grievance investigation, feedback loop, corrective process, no fault compensation

and grievance redress.

3. Responsibilities of health department officials should be defined in relation to GrievanceRedressal Officer and vice versa, supported by sufficient and clear directives and guidelines or


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orders. This should be linked at the district level with an ombudsperson who functions under the

aegis of a National Health Regulatory and Development Authority.

4. Serious grievances and unresolved cases should be referred to the ombudsperson who shouldinitiate joint enquiries involving an officially appointed person / commissioner plus one

representative of a local civil society organisation nominated by the aggrieved person; this helps

to ensure that all aspects of the case are probed into and critical facts are brought out. As part of

the enquiry process, in cases where there is prima facie evidence of deficit or default on behalf of

an official / provider, a facilitated dialogue should be organised between the complainant and the

concerned public functionary allowing both of them to present their versions and viewpoints.

The complainant would be allowed to involve family / community members during this dialogue.

This would effectively bring out all aspects of the situation and would also enforce direct

answerability, over and above any written communications and orders which may emerge at the

end of the process.

5. It is necessary to set up Jan Saha yata Kendras (Peoples Facilitation Centres) that should be co -located with the Office for Grievance Redressal in order to locally provide people with

information services, which functions independently of the Grievance Redress Office. These Jan

Sahayata Kendras must conduct periodic public hearings and install IT enabled Grievance

redressal mechanisms, where SMS or toll-free helplines could be used to register the complaints

of public.

6. Complaints received by the Jan Sahayata Kendras must be forwarded immediately and in anycase within the same day, the appropriate Central Grievance Redress Officer or State Grievance

Redress Officer, as the case may be electronically. The Jan Sahayata Kendras should within 2

days of receiving a complaint, send a notification through e-mail, SMS, any other means, to the


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complainant giving details of the Grievance Redress Officer to whom the complaint has been

forwarded.

7. The Jan Sahayata Kendras must be managed by local CBOs, women groups, faming groups,trade unions and cooperative societies. This will make it possible for people and grassroots

organizations to directly participate in the grievance redressal process. The idea is that instead of

erecting a parallel bureaucracy to check the existing bureaucracy, attempts mus t be made to

bring the GRS as close to ordinary people and their spokespersons, civil society organisations,

with their active participation.

8. The work of the grievance redressal system (GRS) in the block / ward should be periodically(say once in 6 months) reviewed by the Community monitoring committee, which has substantial

participation of local civil society organisations as well as Panchayat members and officials. In

areas where such committees do not exist, similar multi-stakeholder bodies (Grievance redressal

consultative committees) can be formed allowing space for real and direct accountability of the

GRS. If these collective complaints are addressed, the incidence of individual complaints would

automatically be reduced, and this would act as a preventive measure while strengthening local

social organisations.

9. All health facilities should write up the citizen's charter detailing the services to beprovided, their parameters, eligible persons to receive them, roles and responsibilities, grievance

redressal mechanism etc. which would be a big challenge and working on what we feel this

should entail for the health department and its various institutions.

10.The structure of the bill should be made more participatory and not top-down. For instance thefirst place where a complainant has to go to if there has been no immunisation in her village in

the last 2 months should be the gram sabha or the panchayat and not the GR Officer sitting at the


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block level. A number of complaints are even today made in gram sabhas and panchayats but

how is that going to be incorporated in the structure along with monitoring of these complaints.

11.Complaints of an urgent and/ immediate nature or where the complaint concerns the life orliberty of a person, shall be disposed of within 5 days of the receipt of the complaint.

12.The time frame for redressal has been given as 'not more than 30 days'- with regards to healthservices, many a times it may be a matter of life or death and therefore needs a very specific

clause for health services related denials and grievance.

We also wish to inform you that we would like to present oral evidence before the committee

and would be obliged if the Committee grants us this opportunity.

Thanking You,

Ms. Jashodhara Dasgupta

On Behalf of NAMHHR SecretariatAddress:NAMHHR Secretariat

C-152, Golf View ApartmentsSaket, New Delhi-110017

namhhr recommendations on national grievance redressal bill

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