ISLAMABAD: An effective Mohtasib office can play a vital role in making state-run institutions accountable.

This was stated by Dr Noor Fatima, an educationist while addressing a seminar ‘An effective role of Federal Ombudsman Office’.

The seminar was organised by Human Resource Development Network (HRDN).

“Due to lack of awareness, a large portion of the population wrongly assumes that the Mohtasib office has no authority to get its order implemented.

“People also think that this office takes many months to decide complaints,” she said, adding that this gap of trust should be bridged.

She said for gaining people’s trust, the approach of the Federal Ombudsman Office should be individual centric.

Speakers say citizens wrongly assume the office has no authority

“In contemporary world individuals are important. So, the office of the Wafaqi Mohtasib (Federal Ombudsman) should focus on enhancing its trust among the public,” said Dr Noor Fatima.

She said the Mohtasib office offered speedy and free justice to citizens, but due to trust deficit majority of the people were not depending on this worthy organisation.

The basic objective of the seminar was to discuss current status of the federal and provincial ombudsman offices in terms of service delivery and strategising a way forward to an increased public awareness.

The event was started with a brief introduction of citizen voice project ‘Mera Haq’ by Executive Director, HRDN, Suhail Awan.

In his address, Mr Awan said HRDN was implementing ‘Mera Haq’ project in collaboration with USAID, in Islamabad, with an aim to create awareness among citizens of the role and responsibilities of the ombudsman office.

The participants of the dialogue gave some suggestions for creating awareness among the citizens.

They said that for facilitating and improving its trust, the ombudsman office should direct Wapda and Sui Gas company to mention on customers bills that in case of any complaint, they could register their complaints free of cost with the Wafaqi Mohtasib Office.

A participant said the Mohtasib office should bound all universities to mention on their prospectus that students could lodge their complaints against universities with the Mohtasib office.

Responding to these suggestions, Mubashira Bajwa, adviser to the ombudsman, assured the participants that she would take up this issue with the ombudsman for consideration.

She told the participants that approximately 35,000 to 40,000 complaints were being addressed annually and currently there was no pending case.

“We decide all complaints within 60 days,” she said and agreed that awareness among the people especially in the rural areas needed to be enhanced on the role of the ombudsman.

Published in Dawn, October 1st , 2014