Corruption, malpractices category added to Citizen’s Portal

ISLAMABAD: The Prime Minister’s Citizens Portal complaint lodging mechanism has added a new category allowing citizens to file separate complaints regarding corruption and other malpractices.

In accordance to the instructions given by Prime Minister Imran Khan, the Performance Delivery Unit has added a dedicated category to the already existing. This category has been titled as ‘Corruption/Malpractices’, which has been further classified into six sub categories namely, Financial Corruption, Violation of Merit/Rules, Power Abuse, Fraud/Forgery, Harassment, and Inefficiency.

The classification of these various sub-categories has been keenly devised keeping in view the nature of complaints received on the portal. Matters regarding corruption in government funds, bribery and kickbacks fall under the Financial Corruption, whereas irregularities in recruitment, procurement and allotment processes comprise of the Violation of Merit/Rules category.

Similarly favoritism, unauthorised privileges represent Power Abuse section. Harassment, having become one of gravest challenges, is a pertinent subcategory of the Pakistan Citizens’ Portal, where any issue regarding physical/sexual harassment, threatening and blackmailing will be put under this head.

Likewise, any complaint registered concerning fake documents and impersonation will be listed under Fraud/Mockery section. Finally, cases of absenteeism, red-tapism and non-serious attitude will constitute as Inefficiency.

The categorisation aims to facilitate public as well as to safeguard the integrity and reputation of individuals, as majority of reported cases received through the citizens’ portal, represent malafide intent and irrational content for the purposes of achieving personal outcomes.

Moreover, this will also enable the officers to systematically take up or drop irrelevant matters, and hence accelerate the redressal process.

It has been further decided that the lodging of complaints in the category of ‘Corruption/Malpractices’ will be subject to some pre-defined system alerts of Do’s and Don’ts, which will be made part of the “User’s Guidelines Manual for Complaints and Suggestion Handling”, along with other changes and shall be circulated to all concerned departments.

As part of the guidelines, any complaint which does not provide authentic evidence will not be entertained. Citizens are urged to refrain from making complaints carrying baseless allegations.

In addition penal clauses will be highlighted through pop up messages for those complainants whose complaints jeopardise the reputation and integrity of other individuals, or will be found groundless.