Engineer Esam briefing media at his offices said that 2012 was also kicked off in an aggressive manner with nine tenders in the month of January.
Replying to a question of the 24X7 News Bahrain the Minister said that he was confident that Ministry would carry out major projects this year.
The Minister along with his top team also announced the results of a major survey. Majority of public approved the progress of Ministry of Works. The new initiatives will drive further improvements in service delivery.
The Ministry of Works (MoW) completed a very successful Core Services Survey amongst 5699 members of the general public. This first of its kind survey in Bahrain sought opinions on Roads and Sanitary services, as part of the Ministry’s efforts to improve service delivery.
Results of the Public Survey, which was carried out in conjunction with Bahrain-based survey specialists ACK Solutions in Nov/Dec 2011, showed that 49.2% of those surveyed were satisfied or very satisfied with Roads services, the percentage of dissatisfied respondents was 11.9% (the rest were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied). In responding to questions about sanitary services, 52.9% described themselves as satisfied or very satisfied, and 14.9% were dissatisfied.
In particular, the survey uncovered general dissatisfaction with the way in which MoW interacts with its customers, especially around major works that impact them. The dissatisfaction falls broadly into two main areas including delays in addressing complaints and absence of customer interaction.
Following extensive analysis of the results, MoW is currently evaluating options for the creation of a dedicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) function to improve the two way flow of information and obtain valuable data on customer opinions and service experiences – with the aim of being able to quickly remedy service shortcomings.
The CRM system may include a call centre; 2 way feedbacks via the website; social media engagement and management; a face to face interaction facility; regular public majlises (community meetings) and reorganization of its existing complaints handling function.
“Effective communication demands a multi-disciplinary approach to be successful, particularly when our customer base is the entire population of Bahrain – a country made up of a variety of nationalities speaking dozens of languages, and with a broad spectrum of education and diverse cultural basis”, said Essam Khalaf, Minister of Works.
“The success of our CRM initiative will be determined by a range of checks and balances drawn from public figures, media comments, analysis of data on complaints, and future Public Audits. In this way, we will be analysing even more valuable information on whether the form we adopt for our CRM initiative is doing its assigned job.
The Minister committed to keeping the public informed so that Ministry’s stakeholders can see clearly the actions we are taking as a result of their feedback, and to demonstrate how seriously we take our job of delivering world-class public services. “We are an organization with a sense of duty and urgency,” he added.