GUJRAT: The local administration has launched the online hearing of complaints of expatriate community belonging to Gujrat settled across the globe.

A social media app named Zoom will be used as a source of communication between the complainant and the official concerned in the government department. Initially, the facility has been extended to the expatriates for the formal hearing of their grievances during the meeting of the district Overseas Pakistanis Committee (OPC) that has been functioning under the Commissionerate of Punjab’s Overseas Pakistanis Commission. Sources said the facility might also be expanded to the other departments so that the complainants could feel ease in approaching the authorities in their homeland.

A senior administrative officer said that the Gujrat district OPC had heard several online complaints through the social media app during the committee’s meeting held last week where people from various parts of world appeared before the members to share details of their issues.

As per the procedure, the Punjab OPC would receive the complaints on its web portal from where the system automatically refer the complaint to the overseas committee which will send the matter to the department for the resolution of the problem.

Most of the complaints of the overseas Pakistanis are regarding the dispute of their properties with their family members, land grabbing and other domestic disputes which often need attention of the land revenue and police departments.

As per an order of the Lahore High Court, the lower courts too should listen to the cases of overseas Pakistanis expeditiously within a certain period of time.

Gujrat DC Saif Anwar said that there were 29 complaints pending with the OPC out of which 17 had been resolved during the last meeting and the report had also been sent to the Punjab OPC. He said the officials had been tasked with expediting the work on the remaining 12 complaints until the next meeting.

He said the facility would help the expats who would often go back after filing their complaints and there was no such way earlier to listen to them personally in their absence due to which the resolution of complaints would often get delayed.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2020