PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mohammad Sohail Afridi on Thursday warned that government officials who delay addressing public complaints would be held accountable, calling such behavior intolerable.
“Ensuring prompt resolution of public complaints is the top priority of our government, so the Pakistan Citizen Portal is being strengthened to enforce institutional accountability in line with the ‘Awam ka Ehsaas’ vision,” the chief minister said while addressing a ceremony in the provincial capital.
The ceremony, held at the Chief Minister’s House, marked the launch of reforms aimed at improving the performance of the Pakistan Citizen Portal, according to an official statement.
Mr Afridi announced that he would personally oversee and monitor the portal to ensure that citizens’ complaints are resolved within stipulated timelines.
Says he’ll monitor Citizen Portal
He urged all residents of the province, including overseas Pakistanis, to use the portal freely, assuring them that their grievances would be handled quickly and effectively.
The chief minister said the new reforms include special arrangements for people living in remote areas and for those who lack internet access, allowing them to submit complaints manually.
For this purpose, he said, 2,354 dashboards had been set up across districts in the province to facilitate complaint registration.
Emphasising accountability, Mr Afridi said that concerned officials would be answerable for delays in complaint resolution. He clarified that if an issue that could be resolved within one or two days took a week, it would amount to negligence and those responsible would face action.
He further said that all applications developed under the e-governance framework would be merged into the Pakistan Citizen Portal to provide the public with a single, streamlined access point to government institutions.
The chief minister noted that online open courts had already been launched from the Chief Minister Secretariat and directed all departments, as well as divisional and district administrations, to ensure the regular conduct of such courts.
He added that complaints received during online open courts must be uploaded to the portal so they could be properly tracked and monitored.
Mr Afridi said his government was working in accordance with the vision of his leader and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf founder Imran Khan.
He said that Imran Khan, during his tenure as prime minister, had set a practical precedent for e-governance through the citizen portal, adding that the aim was to make the performance of government institutions visible at every level.
“Effective service delivery is not possible without a genuine understanding of public hardships,” he said.
Participants at the event were briefed on the planned reforms to further strengthen the portal.
Officials explained that all relevant applications were being integrated into the Pakistan Citizen Portal to make it easier for the public to access government institutions.
They added that, to expand institutional outreach, an effective system of online open courts would be introduced, while a comprehensive and efficient mechanism for the automatic resolution of complaints would be developed at a third level.
The participants were also informed that more than 0.7 million people were registered on the portal in the province, and that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had achieved a public satisfaction rate of 54 per cent the highest in the country.
Officials said the ongoing reforms were expected to further enhance the portal’s overall performance and improve public satisfaction, according to the statement.
