HYDERABAD, April 29 The Secretariat of Provincial Ombudsman is establishing a special cell to deal with children`s issues at its secretariat in collaboration with Unicef and opening five new regional offices in addition to existing 13 in the districts of interior of the province during 2009-10, according to additional chief secretary Fasiuddin Khan.

Mr Khan said during a visit to the regional directorate of Information Department here on Wednesday that the children`s cell would start functioning in a couple of months.

He said that though there was no bar on attending to children`s cases in existing regional offices of the ombudsman but the purpose behind establishment of the special cell was to give them priority.

He said that the special cells would also be established in the regional offices in phases. As many as 4,000 cases of different nature were under active investigation in all the regional offices, he said.

He said that Provincial Ombudsman Malik Asad Ashraf was taking keen interest in disposing of public complaints against government departments as early as possible.

He had also directed each government department to nominate its focal person to respond to cases involving them to help expedite the process and decrease workload.

To a question, he said that about 150 cases were being decided and 300 complaints of different nature were being received by the regional offices each month.

He said that the applications were being admitted after carrying out scrutiny and filtering out unnecessary or non-related applications.

He said that of the five new regional offices, one each would be established in Ghotki, Khairpur, Jamshoro and Sangar districts while the location of the fifth office would be decided later.

He said that SNEs of the offices had been submitted and they would hopefully start functioning from next year. The main objective behind the institution of provincial ombudsman was to solve public complaints against the government organisations as quickly as possible, he said.

Mr Khan praised the Hyderabad district government for nominating its focal person to attend to cases at the regional office, which had resulted in quick disposal of cases.

He said that the regional offices paid more attention to solving pension cases of the retired government employees and directed all the regional, district heads of the government departments to promptly respond to cases under investigation at the regional offices, else, action would be taken against them.

The registrar of Provincial Ombudsman Secretariat Masood Ishrat Arain, Regional Director Ahmed Jamal Aijazi, Consultant Regional Office Hyderabad Ghulam Nabi Aagro and EDO of revenue Barkat Ahmed Rizvi accompanied the additional chief secretary on his visit.

Earlier, Mr Khan visited the regional office of provincial ombudsman where he held meeting with officers of district government and discussed administrative matters.

He also visited different sites to select a place for the establishment of regional office on permanent basis.