KARACHI, Aug 6: Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan on Friday gave an approval to the establishment of more field offices of the provincial Ombudsman under its reorganization and expansion plan.

He approved the new field offices at Badin, Dadu and Nawabshah besides existing regional offices at Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and Mirpurkhas. He gave approval to the expansion plan with an emphasis on increased facilities in the former civil districts of East, West, Malir and South at a presentation by the Provincial Ombudsman Khan Yusuf Jamal held at the Governor House.

Under the reorganizational plan, the Ombudsman's field offices in Karachi will be established in Districts Central and South. The Central Office will also cater to Malir while South office will cater to East and West.

The governor directed that there should be separate advisors for education and health departments for their being very big departments. On the occasion, the governor gave guiding principles for the Provincial Ombudsman Services so as to provide inexpensive, fast track administrative justice and timely relief to the aggrieved people.

He called for adopting a proactive role for the office of Sindh Ombudsman with an emphasis on suo moto proceedings. The governor directed that a mass awareness programme be launched to have a better impact of the Ombudsman's services and also to contribute to good governance at all levels, including provincial, city/district governments, town municipal administrations and union councils.

In his presentation, the Sindh Ombudsman, Khan Yusuf Jamal, highlighted the strategic challenges for provincial ombudsman services (POS) and said these were aimed at transforming the POS into an effective, result-orientated institution nationally by adopting international best practices in Ombudsman management.

He said his efforts will be directed towards improving the public access and knowledge of Ombudsman services through print and electronic media and to further improve the quality of POS decisions.

The governor directed that turn-around time between admission of complaints and decisions be reduced through an integrated information technology module and proactively strengthen the outreach through the field offices.

The Provincial Ombudsman informed the governor about performance of the POS since 1991 and said that during the 12 years from 1991-2003 the Ombudsman office received a total of 86,382 complaints and admitted 78,522 of them.

He said in 2003 alone, the Ombudsman office admitted 6,643 complaints. Pointing out that Sindh had a population of 35.926 million with adult population being at 19.650 million, there is a fundamental importance of mass awareness regarding Provincial Ombudsman Services.

The Provincial Ombudsman briefed the meeting about the proposed organogram whereby the number of advisers would be reduced and the office of registrar will be replaced by an advisor on admissibility. -APP