KARACHI, May 17: The Sindh Ombudsman, Justice (retd) Haziqul Khairi, while noting a rising tendency of complaints against utility and service departments — mostly due to officials’ apathy, non-responsive and grilling attitude — has expressed the need to curb the trend lest it may trigger an ugly situation for the government.

The ombudsman in his annual report 2001, which will be released shortly, has pointed towards the nature of grievances confronting the people and the mindset of the bureaucracy towards their problems.

Recalling the performance of his office, the ombudsman noted that 6,637 complaints were received in the year 2001 as compared to 5,582 and 6,551 during the preceding two years. Out of the 6,637 complaints, 595 pertained to the federal agencies, which were forwarded to the federal ombudsman, while 6,042 complaints pertaining to the provincial agencies were handled as per rules.

Giving a breakdown of the report, he pointed out that in 2,038 cases (34 per cent), the complainants were advised to first take up their grievances with the higher authorities in the concerned departments as they had approached the Ombudsman Office without first exhausting departmental remedies.

However, 509 cases (8 per cent) were admitted for detailed investigation and 1,713 (28 per cent) were refused admission for want of jurisdiction or they were anonymous, pseudonymous or no mal-administration was mentioned in the complaints, or they pertained to service matters.

1,819 complaints were rejected after preliminary investigation due to non-response from the complainants, service matters, private disputes, subjudice or due time-barred matters.

From the scrutiny of the complaints admitted for detailed investigation, it was observed that the causes of a large number of complaints were delay, followed by inattention, arbitrary action, administrative excesses, neglect, discrimination, violation of law, rules and regulations.

1,782 complaints were admitted for regular investigation. The department-wise breakdown revealed that the Housing and Town Planning Department continued to remain on top, with 362 complaints, followed by Local Government and Education departments, with 263 and 232 complaints respectively, 164 complaints were related to KDA/KBCA, and 241 were against the defunct KMC.

The complaints against Police Department were 191, which by all standards were very high. The large number of complaints showed an unabated trend of misbehaviour and harassment, especially by police pickets and patrol parties stationed at various crossings/turnings and streets. In fact, these were the instances of highly-agonising and humiliating nature and called for stern remedial measures, the report added.

In addition, the ombudsman pointed out that during the year he was prompted to take suo motu actions in matters of public interest against concerned housing agencies in the public sector which was in a shambles.

The cases of Hawkesbay Scheme of Lyari Development Authority, New Malir Housing Project Scheme-I of the Malir Development Authority, and the Kohsar Extension Scheme of the Hyderabad Development Authority were the glaring examples of public victimization at the hands of these agencies.

Besides, suo motu actions were taken on matters pertaining to Wazir Mansion (Quaid-i-Azam’s birth place), encroachment of police stations on public and private lands, charged-parking, dog bite cases, Hippodrome Park in Clifton area, setting up of a Bachat Bazaar in Jehangir Park, paucity of space in graveyards, construction of shopping centre in Jheel Park and non-payment of retirement benefits to the employees of local councils.