Federal Ombudsman of Pakistan Ejaz Ahmed Qureshi, on Tuesday, called for improving coordination with concerned government departments and courts to further strengthen the complaint resolution mechanism. While presiding over a meeting held here to review overall performance issues being faced and other matters at Federal Ombudsman Regional Office Karachi he also stressed the need of improving the mechanism of getting feedback from the complainants.
Ejaz Qureshi said that every complaint registered with the ombudsman secretariat was investigated efficiently and visible improvements had been brought in the entire process and now complaints were being resolved within a period of two months. There were 5,400 complaints under the process of investigation, hearing, or implementation at the regional office, the ombudsman said and added that the significant number of public complaints was against K-Electric while people had also filed complaints in matters related to insurance, natural gas, NADRA, and many other government departments. He said that the work of the ombudsman was focused on the service of people and the secretariat has services of highly trained and dedicated people available to serve the masses.
He said that due to mass awareness about the role of the ombudsman, the number of registered complaints has significantly increased by 76 per cent during January and February 2023 which demonstrate enhanced trust of the general public in the federal ombudsman secretariat. The Federal Ombudsman appreciated the performance of Regional Office Karachi and said that despite a considerable increase in workload in Karachi, the working environment there was good, the working relationship was ideal and every team member was taking interest in the work. Implementation of decisions was another important factor and the ombudsman secretariat had attained remarkable success in that regard as well, he said and called for improving coordination with courts of law. Ejaz Qureshi said that issues of funding had almost been resolved and the secretariat was considering the utilisation of saved funds for providing an honorarium to staff members as there were a number of workers working voluntarily without any salary.
The meeting considered various issues pertaining to further improvement of the work of the federal ombudsman including filling up of vacant posts, induction of more investigation officers, increase in salaries, provision of honorarium and coordination with different government departments and organisations.
Suggestions regarding liaison and working with security agencies were considered in the meeting while the matter of internal audit of the institution also came under discussion to ensure financial transparency. Earlier, Senior Adviser Regional Office Karachi Syed Anwar Hyder briefed the meeting about the performance of the regional office. Later Ejaz Ahmed Qureshi, while talking to APP, informed that he had an important meeting with the Chief Secretary of Sindh, the Secretary Home department and the Inspector General of Prisons Sindh to review progress on Prison Reforms.
He informed that the federal ombudsman had prepared a comprehensive report on the situation of prisons and the need for reforms and that report was submitted to the Chief Justice of Pakistan. The CJ Supreme Court approved the report and forwarded it to all the provinces for implementation, he said and informed that the matter relating to fast-track implementation of the report and removing the constraints in this regard were reviewed in detail in the meeting.
