Responding to numerous complaints from the public of poor and inefficient consular services at the Indian Consulate, New York Consul General Riva Ganguly Das, in her first interaction with the media on March 30th, reached out to streamline and improve the quality of services rendered by the Consulate and its affiliate organizations in the New York region.
Ambassador Ganguly Das announced the decision by the Government of India to engage a new company, CKGS, to take over from the present BLS International company, against whom some complaints from the community, have been received, to take care of the passport services.
“We have to have a system which is responsible to the people. Our expectation is that they (the new company) will provide excellent services to the people and without any problem or harassment,” Ganguly Das said.
The new company will take over from May 7, but those who would have applied already through the current contractor before the term of the BLS expires, would get services from the consulate for emergency services.
During the interactive meeting, Ganguly Das opened the floor for reporters, asking them for suggestions as to what the consulate could do better for the community as well as for the press corps. In the next two hours after her introductory remarks around noon March 30, there were questions, including about better consular services, better media coordination by those in charge at the consulate, and more interaction with the vernacular media in the New York region. There were some three-dozen-odd media personnel at the event.
Ganguly Das said that first and foremost she wants to engage with the media and would like to reach out to the community through them in addition to the consulate’s own outreach efforts.
She wanted the media to carry important messages from the consulate for the community through their columns.
The new Consul General said that one of her targets is to engage with the young Indian-Americans. “The challenge is to bring young people to engage with us”, and asked for suggestions from journalists towards that goal. “We want to interact intensively and extensively with the community here and the consulate is open for messages and suggestions from the community.”
