‘Record number of complaints in 2020’

HYDERABAD:

Federal Ombudsperson Syed Tahir Shahbaz has said that his office received and issued orders on a record number of complaints during 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and recurring lockdowns.

Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad on Thursday, he said his department received a record number of over 135,000 complaints and issued decisions over more than 130,000 complaints- both the figures being the highest since the ombudsperson office was established in 1983.

He went on to claim that the percentage of implementation on their orders during the previous year remained a staggering 98 per cent thanks to their implementation wing.

According to him, the federal ombudsperson received complaints against around 200 government departments but a majority of the cases pertained to the National Bank of Pakistan, National Database and Registration Authority, Pakistan Railways, power and gas distribution companies, post office, State Bank of Pakistan and Benazir Income Support Programme.

The ombudsperson’s regional offices in Sindh are located in only Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur. Shahbaz said in order to save the hassle of travel and related expenses of the complainants, they had started an outreach programme, under which their advisers, consultants and officers visited other districts and heard cases.

In Sindh so far, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot and Sanghar districts have been covered, while Nawabshah and some other districts will be added to the programme soon, he said, adding that “During the pandemic, we began trying to conduct online hearings so that complainants don’t have to come to our offices.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2021.