• Out of the total, 215,000 complaints lodged by expats
• 45pc citizens satisfied with portal’s performance
• Dedicated category of corruption/malpractice added

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Citizen Portal (PCP) has registered over 3.7 million people since it was launched in 2018, with the total number of complaints received on it having crossed the 4.2 million mark.

According to the Prime Minister’s Performance Delivery Unit (PMDU), which runs the portal, 45 per cent citizens have expressed their satisfaction over the performance of the portal.

One such example is of Gudi Bibi, a sanitary worker who retired from a women’s university in Rawalpindi. She found relief within 24 hours of submitting her complaint.

A senior PMDU official told Dawn on Friday that Gudi Bibi, 61, had retired from the university last year but did not receive her dues even after a year.

She then lodged a complaint with the PCP on Thursday after which the portal took up the matter with the varsity’s management, the PMDU official said, adding that the management, however, claimed that the woman’s appointment was illegal and, therefore, she was not eligible for any relief.

At this, the PCP observed that if her appointment was illegal, why was she allowed to work for 32 years. Finally on Friday, the woman received a cheque for Rs179,078.

“Now we will take action against the university staff who intentionally delayed release of her dues,” the official said.

According to the PMDU, a record increase in registered members has been witnessed on the portal.

The monthly data released by the PM’s Performance Delivery Unit on Friday showed that 4.4 million complaints were filed with the portal, of which 4.2 million were from within the country and 215,000 lodged by overseas Pakistanis.

The number of registered individuals from Punjab is 2.2 million, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 600,000 and Sindh, 500,000. As many as 51,000 people have registered from Balochistan and 77,000 from Islamabad Capital Territory, the data revealed.

The PMDU said that so far four million complaints had been addressed.

According to Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistan Citizen Portal app was declared the second best government mobile application in the world at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

He had said 4,646 mobile applications of different categories were submitted by 87 countries at the summit earlier this week. Indonesia came out on top while the United States bagged the third spot.

PM Khan had said the complaint receiving system was unprecedented, which none of the earlier prime ministers had initiated.

The Prime Minister’s Performance Delivery Unit has recently added a dedicated category of corruption/malpractice in the already existing categories in the portal’s complaint-lodging mechanism to eradicate corruption and improve performance of bureaucracy.

The category of ‘corruption/malpractices’ has been further classified into six sub-categories. They are: financial corruption, violation of merit/rules, power abuse, fraud/forgery, harassment and inefficiency.

The classification of these various sub kinds has been keenly devised, keeping in view the nature of complaints received on the portal. Matters regarding corruption in government funds, bribery and kickbacks fall under financial corruption, whereas irregularities in recruitment, procurement and allotment processes qualify for violation of merit/rules category. Similarly, favouritism and unauthorised privileges represent the power abuse section.

The activation of the ‘corruption/malpractices’ option will not only help filter out frivolous complaints, but also help the officers entertain genuine complaints.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2021