Chandy gets UN award for initiative

IANS/Thiruvananthapuram

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has won the prestigious United Nations Public Service Award for his mass contact programme initiative, an official release said yesterday.

The chief minister bagged the first place in the category ‘Preventing and Combating Corruption in the Public Service’ from the Asia and Pacific region. The second place was won by South Korea’s Seoul Metropolitan Infrastructure Headquarters.

Chandy first launched the mass contact programme when he became the chief minister in 2004. Under the programme, he travelled to all the 14 districts in the state to listen to the complaints of people relating to governance issues.

At several places, he was seen listening to people’s complaints for more than 18 hours at a stretch.

Chandy received the UN award for the mass contact programme which he conducted in 2011 after becoming the chief minister for the second time.

The highlight of this programme was that the problems of the people could be directly communicated to the chief minister without any intermediary.

A total of 550,000 petitions were received in 2011, of which 300,000 were resolved. Financial assistance worth Rs220mn was provided to the people during the programme.