ISLAMABAD: It’s been four weeks since the system of focal persons for municipal complaints was introduced, and fears of it being unsuccessful are proving to be true. The major reason behind this is that the city managers did not do their homework properly – a parallel system to deal with public complaints already exists in the civic agency, and to bring another one without discarding the old wasn’t a bright idea.

Earlier complaints used to be lodged with the various directorates of the Capital Development Authority, but it took long periods of time to resolve the complaints. An ‘emerging’ local politician – who is eyeing a National Assembly seat in the federal capital in the next general elections from the platform of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – is rumoured to have come up with the idea of appointing focal persons to provide speedy relief.

On February 28, 10 focal persons were appointed, and each was given two to three sectors to deal with. An insider told Dawn that the focal persons were appointed without being taken into confidence.

“Nobody asked us whether we wanted to become a focal person or not,” seconded a focal person on the condition of anonymity. “We have been asked to perform the duties of the focal person in addition to our regular workload. But dealing with complaints is a full-time job in itself, and it is difficult to cope with the two together,” he added.

Moreover, no resources or office space have been allocated for the new system, and focal persons complain that CDA bosses have not even provided them with official cellphones.

“We are taking complaints on our personal telephone numbers that were published in the media. We receive between 200 and 300 complaints everyday on our phone which is tiring.

We then have to forward the complaints to the relevant staff for redressing them,” an official said.

Similarly, focal persons complain that they have not been provided official vehicles to survey the areas. “We use our on cars and spend more than Rs2000 on fuel every day,” a focal person said.

The focal person adds that there is absolutely no incentive to perform the additional job. “We have been asked to first perform and then receive benefits,” he claimed.

However, the major hindrance besides the lack of enthusiasm is the non-cooperative attitude – dubbed the ‘silent treatment’ – of the staff of the services wing and other directorates who were working under the inquiry offices system.

“The people who introduced the system overlooked the fact that a parallel system already exists in the CDA – there are 18 inquiry offices within its municipal limits,” an insider said.

“In the presence of the old inquiry offices system, the new system of focal persons has not been successful.”

“The staff of the services wing thinks that we are intruding into their domain and thus they do not cooperate,” another focal person said.

Currently, there are no plans in order to integrate the new system into the old one, and so a large majority of complaints have remained unattended since the new system has come in force.

On insider said that hardly 10 per cent of the public complaints were addressed and those too which required manpower rather than material. “Compounding this further is the fact that complaints are duplicated in both the systems. There is no centralised system to monitor the performance of focal persons and address the problems they are complaining about,” he explained.

However, Dr Mustafa Hyder, the CDA Board’s secretary and in-charge of the focal person system, painted a rosy picture and pinned high hopes on the new system.

He said offices, official vehicles and mobile telephones would soon be provided to the focal persons but he had no plans on how he would make the lower and labouring staff acquainted with the new system.

It is being suggested that the office of Chief Complaint Officer, which has become redundant, can be used, and the new focal persons made the in-charge of dealing with public complaints.

Another official claimed that the involvement of focal persons into the affairs of services wing and other departments such as enforcement (anti-encroachment), environment and others had exposed bottlenecks and negligence of the staff of the old system. “The focal persons came to know that encroachment was the biggest problem in almost all sectors andnothing serious is being done intentionally,” he said.

While it has to be acknowledged that the focal person system might have been able to uncover corruption within the department, without properly delineating its tasks and operations, it will remain a long way off from being successful.