Almost all government department and organizations in Pakistan are supposed to have some kind of citizens’ grievance redress mechanism in place. These mechanisms are intended to address day-to-day concerns of the people at the departmental level. In some cases dedicated human resource is available for this purpose. There is also a growing tendency, especially in recently established regulatory authorities, to have in-house complaint cells with detailed guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs). For instance, PEMRA has constituted a Council of Complaints under formal regulations in 2002.

The justice sector institutions have a number of provisions to carry out internal accountability and address complaints regarding performance of the judiciary. Likewise, there is an elaborate mechanism for both accountability and public grievance redress involving the police, especially under the Police Order 2002 and the Local Government Ordinance 2001. The institution of Ombudsman, first established at the federal level in 1983 to address citizen’s grievance against administrative excesses, has now been replicated in the provinces. Finally, the civil society has come up with its own alternate models of public grievance redress in the non-governmental sector. The mechanisms and provisions existing in these various sectors/institutions are briefly discussed in the Links on previous page.