ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to curtail powers of the Federal Ombudsman after the state-run office pointed out massive irregularities and corruption in federal and provincial departments.

The government has in this regard prepared a bill to make amendments to the Establishment of the Office of Wafaqi Mohtasib Order 1983 and the Federal Ombudsmen Institutional Reforms Act 2013.

Under the bill — Federal Ombudsmen Institutions (Amendment) Act 2017 — which will soon be tabled in the National Assembly, the Federal Ombudsman will not able to interfere in the affairs of provincial governments and regional offices.

At meeting was held in the law ministry on Monday to discuss the proposed bill and finalise a plan for tabling it in parliament.

Under the bill, a copy of which is available with Dawn, the Federal Ombuds­man cannot appoint provincial ombudsmen or set up regional offices and the Federal Tax Ombudsman cannot serve as acting Federal Ombudsman in the latter’s absence.

The new bill will remove the following clauses of the previous Acts: “The Mohtasib holding office, on commencement of this clause, shall continue to perform his functions and exercise his powers in all matters under this Order in respect of such districts till such time a Mohtasib is appointed on first occasion for these districts under clause.

“Provided that till such time the acting Ombudsman is appointed, the Wafaqi Mohtasib (Ombudsman) shall act as Ombudsman of the concerned office and in case the Wafaqi Mohtasib is absent or unable to perform function of his office, the Federal Tax Ombudsman shall act as Wafaqi Mohtasib (Ombudsman), in addition to this own duties. The Mohtasib may set up regional office as, when and where required.

“Authorities of provincial functionaries, etc, the Mohtasib may, if the considers it expedient, authorise, with the consent of a provincial government any agency, public servant or other functionary working under the administrator control of the provincial government to undertake the functions of the Mohtasib under clause (1) or clause (2) of Article 14 in respect of any matter falling within the jurisdiction of the Mohtasib; and it shall be the duty of the agency, public servant or other functionary so authorised to undertake such functions to such extent and subject to such conditions as the Mohtasib may specify.”

Parallel judicial system

Salman Faruqi, the incumbent Federal Om­bud­s­man, has reportedly taken some drastic measures to provide for a virtual alternative judicial system in the country through his office by checking bottlenecks and irregularities in federal ministries like interior and foreign affairs and some provincial departments as well as police.

His two reports on police and jail reforms were appreciated by the Supreme Court which had ordered the provincial governments to implement in their provinces recommendations made in the reports.

According to the Federal Ombudsman, his office had last year addressed a record number of 94,000 complaints against an average of 16,000 complaints attended in previous years. It addressed more than 320,000 complaints over the past three years.

The Federal Ombuds­man has introduced a parallel judicial system in all ministries and government offices to address grievances and complaints about maladministration and injustice in these departments.

Under this system, all ministries and federal government offices have designated ‘grievance officers’, not below the rank of BS-19, to register and hear complaints against these departments on behalf of the Federal Ombudsman.

Through a notification effective from Oct 1 last year, the grievance officers were empowered under Section 33 of the Federal Ombudsman Act to hear and decide cases amicably.

The Federal Ombudsman also introduced “informative stands and boards” placed at the receptions of all ministries and departments for public awareness. List of all focal persons/grievance officers of ministries and departments are available at the website of the Federal Ombudsman.

In January this year, the Federal Ombudsman sought the Presidency’s assistance in broadening its network to the level of district and union councils to closely monitor and check maladministration in government departments and address people’s grievances.

However, the proposal could not be materialised because, it is believed, it was quite a difficult decision for the president belonging to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to give a go-ahead to the idea due to some political compulsions.

“If offices of Federal Ombudsman are established at the union councils’ level, irregularities of government departments will be exposed and ultimately the government will be blamed for these,” said a senior official at the Presidency, who did not want to be named.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2017