Appointment of Principal Officers

To facilitate the administrative oversight role of Ombudsman, Article 10 (4) of the Ombudsman Order provides that all government departments are obliged to notify a Principal Officer (PO) of their department who is supposed to receive all written complaints and grievances of the public with regard to the functioning of the department. In  addition, he  should be placed under a duty to respond in writing. The Ministry of Law, Justice  and Human Rights (Access to Justice Program Management Unit), Government of Pakistan, Islamabad notified a list of designated Officers (giving regular designations only) nominated by the respective Federal and Provincial Departments as Principal Officers (Ex-Officio) for dealing with Public grievances pertaining to their respective Departments vide Notification No. F. 2 (10)/2002-AJP dated September 30, 2002 covering 33 federal and 53 provincial Divisions/Departments (see Appendix 1).

However, upon telephone calls in August 2005 by The Network research staff to five randomly selected designated federal Officers from the above referred list (Commerce, Health, Narcotic Control Division, Petroleum & Natural Resources, Kashmir Affairs & Northern Areas and Food, Agriculture & Livestock), none of the responding officers of notified designations said they were POs for addressing Public Grievance. All five were totally unaware of the above-stated notification. Another five officers to whom each of them referred to upon request were equally uninformed regarding the existence of any POs  in their respective Ministries/Divisions.

 

Even though the Federal Government had notified these POs in September 2002, their performance can be assumed to be negligible and absolutely unsatisfactory. The information regarding their existence, including their valid contact points, has never been disseminated for public so that citizens can avail this avenue for redress. These officers lack training in handling of public grievance complaints, and their departments do not have any PGR system in place. Efficiency and Discipline (E & D) Rules are also silent about agency/Department level performance indicators of POs. All this has led to one conclusion, that grievance redress mechanisms already inbuilt in the Ombudsman law could not be fully activated.

Administrative Grievance Redressal Rules 2003 for the Principal Officers also apparently point to lack of seriousness of the Government to deal with public grievances redress. These draft Rules, which were supposed to fill the gap of administrative Procedure Law, fail to elaborate even some very basic and fundamental PGR issues. No procedure whatsoever has been suggested in the rules and wide discretionary powers were retained by the government agencies/departments. Citizens right to hearing, access to information, and compensation-based remedies could not be incorporated and the Rules failed to describe the administrative procedure of fact-finding and assessments. These draft Rules are also deficient in terms of rationalizing time factor in complaint disposition by administrative authorities.