Returns on social media can’t be achieved in a short time span. Most of us don’t understand this mechanism and blame social media for not yielding results. Delhi Municipal Corporation is one of the government agencies that thinks social media has not been fruitful. The agency that had launched three Facebook pages – 1) South Delhi Municipal Corporation, 2) North Delhi Municipal and 3) East Delhi Municipal has claimed that Facebook is not working for them since everyone is not having Internet. So the plan is to launch call centers instead (News Source: TOI)
All the three Facebook pages were maintained by the DEMS department who would address only sanitation related problems. Initially the Municipal Corporation of Delhi started with a Facebook page which had more than 8K followers but during the month of October last year the MCD launched three pages to serve the people of Delhi better. After that the MCD page has been inactive and the latest zonal pages have been active. However, it is interesting to read TOI’s story which says the pages have been inactive for last six months. The article has not specified which page and since it has a strict no policy of linking back so it is difficult to find out.
After monitoring all the three pages, it has been found that East Delhi page has been active and also addressing grievances. The page that has more than 600 fans, is definitely well maintained in comparison to the North and South pages that have been updating with complaint status. If one trolls both the pages it looks like spam and hence the interaction has been negligible on the pages.
VP Pandey, chairman, DEMS committee, North corporation, whose department is responsible for managing the pages, has stated that since everyone has a landline so addressing issues by phone call would be better. Also, the South Delhi Municipal has cited the lack of staff and resources for this decision. Further, the officials have said that they are not addressing issues on Facebook but transferring it to the concerned departments. Not sure what is the status of such complaints.
A technology or a medium works depending on how we use it. In this case the MCD has clearly failed to understand how social media works and if they are avoiding the medium to avoid the complaints, then isn’t that the harsh reality of the services that are being provided by the department?
With call centers coming into the picture, the DEMS chairman does have a point as everyone has a landline but how good the department is serving its people would not be public without social media.
Image courtesy: www.thehindu.com