All UP government departments to have Twitter accounts and redress people's problems

Various government departments in Uttar Pradesh have been asked to open Twitter accounts within a week regarding effective communication with the people, redressal of their complaints apart from highlighting their works.

"Through these Twitter accounts, grievances of the people can be resolved timely with coordination between departments," Principal Secretary Information Awanish Kumar Awasthi said at Lucknow while addressing a two-day workshop of information department on "effective use of social media in government works".

He said it will also help people to connect with the government. The move has been initiated after Chief Minister YogiAdityanath asked the information department to ensure that all departments join Twitter like the Central government.

The state police Twitter handle @Uppolice, which has over1,77,000 followers, is providing help in solving grievances of the people. Adityanath, whose twitter handle is @myogiadityanath has 5,22,000 followers and through it, he highlights his daily achievements and engagements.

The state police had launched the Twitter-based grievance redressal service in 2016 and has addressed lakhsof complaintss since then. UP is the first state in the country, which is using Twitter service at all its police stations to redress grievances of people in order to have a better connect with them, state police officers claimed.

These initiatives were previously taken by the Centre mainly by ministries like the External Affairs, Railways and Commerce. The whole process is based on Twitter's customer relation management platform in which software complaints are forwarded to the concerned districts with a particular code that is generated for the complaint.

Through this workshop, which will continue for two days the information department aims to train its information officers to effectively work on this social media platform. State Information Minister Neelkanth Tiwari, Senior officers including Director Information, AK Jha and otherswere present at the workshop.