Man makes hoax call to teach 'lazy' Lucknow civic body a lesson

LUCKNOW: Karma is the sweetest revenge, but it has no deadline. So, a city businessman decided to take matters into his own hands.
Annoyed over Lucknow Municipal Corporation's (LMC) sloth in redressing his past complaints about unattended garbage, Jankipuram Sector-C Sanjay Singh pulled off a prank on Tuesday that the civic authorities will perhaps remember for a lifetime.
A year ago, Singh approached the LMC through its integrated grievance redressal system cell several times to complain about accumulating trash outside his residence. But, no help came. Finally, local residents paid from their own pockets to hire workers and get the area cleaned. Recently, the businessman heard that the Smart City command centre - a single-window system to redress civic grievances - was addressing complaints within hours. He called the control room and registered a false complaint about garbage being dumped in the open.
Staff at the command centre quickly forwarded the gripe to LMC, which in turn rushed its sanitation workers to collect the trash and install a dustbin. The cleaning squad reached the area only to realise it was a hoax call.
"We were harassed (by LMC) for a year and decided to teach officials a lesson. When the workers came, we told them residents had teamed up to remove garbage and were no longer dependent on LMC," Singh told TOI.
Additional municipal commissioner Amit Singh said the matter would be probed. "First, action will be taken against officials who did not resolve garbage complaints for a year even though the deadline is seven days. Later, we will decide on the prank call," Singh added.
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