ISLAMABAD: There has been a massive increase in the number of complaints lodged with the Federal Ombudsman Office against the alleged maladministration in the federal government-run departments this year as compared to the previous year.

According to a press release issued on Sunday, during the nine-month period over 100,000 people knocked at the door of the Ombudsman office to get their issues resolved.

“The Federal Ombudsman office has received 104,000 complaints and disposed of 94,000 complaints from January to 30th September, whereas, in previous year it was 53,073 receipts and disposal was 53,213,” the press release said.

The Ombudsman office is supposed to resolve complaints and provide relief to public by carrying out independent investigations into complaints about maladministration in any federal government agency.

The press release said even the Covid-19 lockdown could not stop the flow of complaints and they doubled in number from January to September this year as compared to the same period in 2019.

Out of 104,000 complaints received in last nine months, 94,000 have been disposed of

The Ombudsman office’s press release said that the increase in the number of applications “evidences the success of awareness campaign and confidence of the people on this institution”.

While addressing a quarterly progress review meeting of investigating officers of the head office and regional offices through video conference, Federal Ombudsman Syed Tahir Shahbaz urged them to work for strict implementation of findings and provision of better facilities to complainants.

According to the press release, the meeting was informed that 94 per cent cases had been decided within 60 days. It was also informed that the Outreach Complaint Resolution programme had been revived and that the investigating officers had been visiting remote areas for hearing public complaints and receiving complaints through Khuli Kachehris (open public forums) at their doorstep.

The Ombudsman appreciated the performance of all investigating officers “up to the utmost satisfaction” even in the critical situation of Covid-19. He reviewed measures taken for the betterment of prisoners in jails and overseas Pakistanis.

The officers of regional offices in Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Multan, Bahawalpur, D. I. Khan, Quetta and Peshawar attended the meeting through video link.

When contacted, Ombudsman office’s spokesperson Javed Chaudhry explained that because of the awareness campaign, the number of applications had increased this year.

In reply to a question, he said there was no decline in the performance of the federal government’s organisations this year despite the Covid-19 pandemic. It was rather improvement in awareness among the people about the Ombudsman office as they earlier had no information as how they could register their complaints free of cost with Ombudsman office to get a verdict within 60 days, he added.

“Across the country we ran a campaign that resulted in increase of applications,” he said and added that special focus was on Balochistan and this year only from Quetta “we saw 700pc increase in applications”.

He said public complaints against electricity supply companies remained on top with 42,000 complaints, followed by 32,000 complaints related to Ehsaas programme while 9,000 people registered complaints against gas distributing companies. He said the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and Post Office remained on number four and five, respectively, in terms of the number of complaints received.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2020