SAHIWAL: Coordination officers will be appointed at union council (UC) level to facilitate people’s complaints against public officials and departments.

The provincial ombudsman’s office had already appointed officials at tehsil level, but taking organisation facilitation network to UC level and deeper would be accomplished in the near future. This was said by Mian Riazul Haq, district adviser at the ombudsman’s office, while talking to Dawn here in his office.

He said the idea of taking the ombudsman to district, tehsil and UC levels had been introduced recently and it was in this background that all district offices were established in mid-2014.

He further said the whole process had been undertaken to improve governance structure and facilitate citizens who wanted to highlight complaints against any public officials.

Haq said the Sahiwal district office received 60 to 70 complaints a month and around 95pc were being redressed under the defined procedure. He also said the appointment of a coordination officer at UC level would take the ombudsman’s office to grassroots.

Naeem Naqvi, a local political worker, said the state mechanism of extending a transparent structure to an ordinary citizen was mandatory and must be accomplished at the third tier of governance – union council level.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2015

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