LAHORE: The Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Punjab Office has introduced Performance App to review the performance of assistant commissioners (ACs) to check their on-spot efficiency.

Through this app, the performance of ACs with regard to various performance indicators related to general administrative matters, land administration and provision of facilities to the public in all tehsils would be monitored directly in the office of ACS Punjab.

The ACS office says performance monitoring will be done on a daily, monthly and seasonal basis keeping in view the importance of different sectors. At the end of the month, the performance reports of all the districts will be submitted to ACS Irum Bukhari who will evaluate the top tehsils.

The performance of the officers will be assessed on the basis of their visits for price checking of essential commodities, price fixation of fruits and vegetables, retrieval of government land, inspection of land centres, land revenue collection and complaints received on Pakistan Citizen Portal.

Geo-tagging of district administration would be possible after the launch of this app.

Meanwhile, many ACs have expressed their dissatisfaction over the evaluation of their performance through the new app. An AC said how could real monitoring be done through the app as the ACs were doing various tasks and duties including those assigned by their respective deputy commissioners.

He said an AC could not stand in front of a shop for whole day to check whether the shopkeeper was selling items on proper rate list or not. The AC said there were also issues that people lodge complaints about eatables like juices that did not fall in the essential list.

The ACs also say the government has not empowered them to take action and that could be done by amending laws.

“How an AC can challan a shopkeeper, if a group of lawyers arrives there and stop ACs from issuing challans,” an AC said.

ACS Punjab Irum Bukhari, however, says the app has been developed on the special directive of Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to eradicate corruption and restore public confidence in government institutions. She says the ACs would be located on the map and feedback would be taken through video-link.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2021