KARACHI, May 19: The system of district ombudsman under the nazim or minister for local government as envisaged by Local Government Ordinance-2001 is against the very concept of administrative justice and if allowed to function, it will cause irreparable damage to this newly-born system (ombudsman) in the country.

This observation was made by Sindh Ombudsman Justice Haziq-ul-Khairi in response to a question while talking to Dawn on Friday.

He said he also had raised the matter before the governor and pointed it out that “if due to political expediency or otherwise, the government is keen to have district ombudsman, he may be saved from the clutches of executive and placed under the appellate and administrative jurisdiction of provincial ombudsman, such as the high court has over the lower judiciary.”

This will be in consonance with the basic concept of independence of ombudsman from executive”, he said and added that this suggestion was part of his report on “decade of Sindh Ombudsman”.

The concept of administrative justice led to the establishment of this institution in more than 105 countries of the world to protect people’s rights against corruption, high handedness and inefficiency of bureaucracy.

“Unlike a judge, an ombudsman is not supposed to sit in monastic isolation but meet people from all walks of life to know their grievances and to keep himself fully alive to his surroundings,” Justice Khairi added.

Pointing out that both at federal and provincial level, the ombudsman was invested with power to establish regional offices through which he can reach grass-root level, he said he had already drawn the attention of the authorities. However, so far, no communication had been received.

Further elaborating his point, Justice Khairi said if ombudsman were appointed at district level, it would not only add to extra burden on the exchequer, but also result in compromising administrative justice as the district ombudsman would be under the Nazim or under the minister of local government which would be contrary to the principle of justice which called for separation of executive from administration of justice.

To another question, he referred to the views of Federal Tax Ombudsman Justice (Retd) Saleem Akhtar which were also reproduced in the annual report 2001.

According to Justice Salim Akhtar: “The system of ombudsman at a lower level could succeed only if there is education, knowledge, awareness, understanding and respect for each other and should be manned by men of integrity and unimpeachable character and most important is that such an ombudsman be independent in all respect from the executive.

Justice Khairi said the Annual Report 2001 also briefly dealt with the performance of last 10 years of the Sindh Ombudsman since its establishment in June 1991.

Mr S.M. Wasim, who was a civil servant, played an important role in establishing its secretariat and selected a team of dedicated officers who had rendered valuable services to this institution, he pointed out and said on completion of his tenure Justice (retd) Salahuddin Mirza was appointed who made contribution from September 25, 1995 to Sept 24, 1999 in raising its stature and since Sept 1999 he Justice (Khairi) had been assigned this office.

According to the report, during the decade the Ombudsman office received a total number of 72,170 complaints.

Out of this 6,916 pertains to federal government agencies and 65,254 to provincial government agencies. during the period 63,379 complaints were disposed of while 1875 were pending.

Out of 63,379 in 1,9243 cases complainants were advised to approach concerned authorities or wait action by the agencies while 7,104 complaints were forwarded to the concerned agencies for necessary action and 20,409 complaints were rejected at the initial stage for want of jurisdiction or being anonymous and out of 18,498 complaints admitted for investigation, 16,623 were decided while relief provided to 12,388 and 4,235 were rejected.

To another question Justice Khairi said that most of the complaints admitted for investigation were of delay, followed by inattention, arbitrary action, administrative excesses, neglect, discrimination, violation of law, rules and regulations. In addition to these complaints, the ombudsman had high suo-moto powers which were exercised by the ombudsman which were to affect public at large.

Some of suo-moto cases pertain to Gutka and Supari, rise in dog-bite cases, charged parking, provision of public toilets, encroachment on pavements and parks, noise pollution of rickshaws, removal of encroachment from private amenity plots occupied by police and non-registration of private schools.

He expressed satisfaction that the institution of ombudsman had succeeded in creating some awareness of administrative justice among the people and gave some hope to the poor, needy and helpless to knock the door of the ombudsman that their grievances would not go un-responded.