UT app to make life easy for govt house allottees

CHANDIGARH: For more than 10,000 allottees of government houses, registering, tracking a complaint, vacating a house and taking possession will soon be only a touch away on their mobile phones in the city.
The UT administration is coming up with e-Awas mobile app, which is in the final stages of pre-launch testing.
“A range of services will be available on the mobile.The thrust area, though, will be the complaint and grievance redressal system. The allottees will be able to register their complaints regarding maintenance and any other issue related with the allotment process or non-responsiveness of maintenance or engineering staff to their complaints,” said an official.
The complaint registration through the mobile is expected to speed up the grievance redressal system, which officials admit leaves much to be desired.
“E-Awas mobile app aims to add to the transparency and enabling hassle-free allotment of government houses. National Informatics Centre (NIC), Chandigarh, has developed the bidding-based house allotment application — eAwas — which is running successfully in Chandigarh since 2017. The city’s experience with the system has been shared with states of Haryana, Punjab and Goa, and also demonstrated to Maharashtra, Assam and Ladakh and is under consideration there,” said the official.
There are around 13,000 government houses in Chandigarh, out of which around 12,000 of 18 categories are listed under General Pool for allotment to employees of Haryana, Punjab, Punjab and Haryana High Court and UT Chandigarh posted in the city.
Earlier, the allotment process was manual. The data was maintained in registers, resulting in delays in the allotment processes. There was no single point from where concerns of allottees could be addressed.
Status of licence fee received and maintenance of the houses by engineering department was not available for the House Allotment Committee (HAC) to take any decisions. Despite being vacant, many houses were not occupied, causing revenue loss to the government.
“These problems engendered a need to automate the processes of the house allotment department, rent controller and the maintenance wing of engineering department as managing a large number of houses and the continuous flow of applications required a lot of effort and resources. With this in mind, the e-Awas software was conceptualised and the project was initiated under the guidance of secretary, House Allotment Committee,” said the official.