Romanian mayor sets up email address for residents’ complaints

Emil Boc, the mayor of Cluj Napoca, a city in western Romania, has set up a Yahoo email address were the residents of the city can complain about small things “that annoy them” in the city. The mayor told Mediafax he is the only one who has access to the email address and the one redirecting the messages to the appropriate departments within the City Hall. The address is lucruricaremaenerveaza@yahoo.com (Romanian for "things that annoy me"). The mayor said he received tens of messages in the first day of setting up the email address, which is meant to complement the other channels Cluj Napoca residents have to file complaints. These are the MyCluj app, the website of the Cluj Napoca City Hall and its Facebook page. “I’m inviting Cluj residents to write about specific, small things that annoy them in the city, which they saw and were bothered by, and which can be solved quickly, with little money. I am the one redirecting these complaints to the specialized departments within the City Hall and requesting that they are solved. I will present every month a report on the complaints, their nature and how many were solved,” Boc said. The mayor said he was upset by a complaint he received at the end of last year about a person not being able to arrange a funeral for a relative. The person was told that sextons do not work until after January 3. “How can this happen? It is something that bothers one, as a citizen. Or you might go to the Finances department and not find a photocopier to use for the requested documents and you need to search for one half of a city. Or there are payments that can be made online but are still performed offline. Another annoying thing is a bad sidewalk work, which could cause someone to sprain their ankle. Or the snow that wasn’t picked up properly at a pedestrian crossing. It is a small but bothersome thing,” Boc explained. Among the first complaints the mayor received were one about malfunctioning validating machines of the public transport system and misaligned sewer caps. Cluj-Napoca, the best-ranked Romanian city in global Quality of Life Index 2019 (Photo: Emil Boc Facebook Page) editor@romania-insider.com