Citizen Portal to help empower people: PM

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday said that the Pakistan Citizen Portal (PCP) is the first step towards empowering people, saying it will help improve civic services delivery.

"I want more people to use it (Citizen Portal),” said the prime minister while addressing a ceremony marking the completion of two years of Citizen Portal.

“We will strengthen it further for it being the best method to register citizens' complaints. As prime minister, it is also easy for me to know which minister or department is working well and which bureaucrat is performing bad," he added.

Since its launching on October 28, 2018, around three million people registered themselves at the portal, and reported 2.7 million complaints, out of which 2.5 million were resolved.

The event was attended by the federal ministers, bureaucrats, senior officers and media representatives.

The prime minister said the portal would also help the government know the issues in administration as well as the good and bad performing ministries and departments.

He said it would also make it easier to enforce carrot and stick policy and decide the promotion, incentives and even removal of the bureaucrat from their services because the new civil service rules provided for termination of the corrupt or bad performing officers.

“The Citizen Portal is also a journey toward the very direction of making the people know their rights,” he added.

Commenting on the statistical analysis, the prime minister observed that highest number of complaints related to municipal issues, showed that local govt system was not working properly.

“The highest number of complaints [on this portal] related to municipal issues, which shows that local government system is not working properly… We are introducing a new type of local government system in which funds will go to the grassroots and people’s problems will be resolved by the city government,” he said.

“We are introducing an autonomous local government system in Karachi and other major cities,” he said. “The new local government system will revolutionise the area, making the people directly elect their representatives, who will also control the funds,” he added.

"This will be the best way to address their municipal issues. The metropolitans like Lahore and Karachi would have their own governments and revenue generation, besides independent systems for municipal services,” the prime minister said.

Imran said that the people in Sindh and Punjab, were very fed up with corruption at the district level. However, he added that the government was also legislating a law which would stipulate sacking of an official involved in wrongdoing rather than transfer from the post.

The prime minister noted that the mentality of the rulers had not changed since independence. “Since the beginning, the country could not do away with the elitist mindset, inherited from the British rulers,” he added.

Contrary to the colonial systems or monarchies, Imran said, the democratic systems had given voice to the masses and made the governments answerable. “The citizen portal is a journey toward the very direction of making the people know their rights,” he added.