PESHAWAR: The Provincial Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) has set up a complaint cell here to monitor the violations of women’s right to vote and report the same to the relevant authorities for necessary action.

A statement issued after a special meeting on the issue of women voting on Friday, said that the PCSW decided to set up a complaint cell so that citizens could lodge complaints against practices and unlawful activities of barring women from voting during the today’s (Saturday’s) local body elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It said that the people could lodge complaints through phone call, SMS or submitting report on a web link.

Anyone could send an SMS or dial 0331-9275477 and 091-9218613 with details of constituency and nature of issue. They could also do it by completing and submitting the online registration form on website pcswew.crowdmap.com. The statement said the web link would also display information on number and nature of reported complaints categorized and displayed on the digital map of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in colour coding.

The PCSW said that women being half of the population had a very important role to play in the local body elections. As such, the PCSW decided to monitor and identify violations of women’s right.

The complaint desk would monitor election based violence towards women and other related complaints, the statement said.

The PCSW would forward the complaints to the election commission/district residing officer for immediate action in this regard. The statement said the members of the district committees of the PSCW in 12 districts would also be reporting such complaints.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

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