Empowering citizens
The Pakistan Citizen Portal is a flagship project of the PTI government launched two years ago to have a close rapport with the citizenry and help redress their grievances. We have little feedback to know the public perception as to how bad or good the project has fared since it was unveiled on October 28, 2018, but officially we are told that around three million people registered themselves at the portal, and reported 2.7 million complaints, out of which 2.5 million were resolved.
The portal is indeed a first notable step towards empowering people in terms of granting them access to the country’s top leadership for the resolution of their complaints. It is helpful for the Prime Minister to get first-hand information on the issues facing the public, and to know which issues need to be addressed on a priority. For instance, according to the statistics provided by the government, most of the complaints registered with the portal were related to municipal services – something that speaks of the bad performance of the local government representatives.
The portal also serves as a good mechanism of checks and balances, helping the Prime Minister to gauge the performance of the various departments and the ministries of the government. It provides a credible basis for giving promotions and incentives to high performing civil servants, and for their demotion, and even removal from service, on bad performance.
The citizens portal will, therefore, help improve civic services delivery in the country – as also noted by Prime Minister Imran Khan while speaking to a gathering last week that marked the completion of the portal’s two years in operation. While the portal needs to be strengthened further with the application of technology, it should also win the trust of the public through swift redressal of the grievances of the public.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 7th, 2020.
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