LAHORE - The Citizen Feedback Monitoring Programme (CFMP) is yet dysfunctional for the past six months, it has been learnt.
The system was devised by the Punjab government to monitor and redress compulsory services at district level like dialysis, emergency cases, property registration, intiqal and fard and domicile cases from Revenue Department, issuance of character certificate and driving license, Rescue 1122, police department, building plan approval, bardana distribution and wheat procurement from food department etc.
The CFMP, a joint venture of the World Bank and the Punjab government, was developed and run by the PITB to ascertain feedback of the public in nine services to encourage participation of common men to curb corruption and shun redtapism since 2012.
When contacted the board officials on malfunctioning of the dashboard said that it happened due to multiple reasons including cancellation of the board agreement with a private call company. They said that the PITB was experiencing problems with the call company which as per the contract was responsible to send calls, robotic calls, or SMS to the citizens for feedback.
During the course of time, the board administration realised that the company to which the feedback services were rendered was not doing up to the mark job. “The board decided to cancel the contract and establish a dashboard run by it rather further outsourcing it,” said Hasnain, Programme Director CFMP.
“Instead of relying on the private call companies the board will depend on its own resources to ensue data entry as well as integrity of it,” the programme directed stressed. He said that the board will be able to develop it in two to three months.
He further told that the CFMP had started interactive robotic calls as a stopgap arrangement to get feedback of the common men. He said that due to malfunctioning of the dashboard the CFMP could not generate district-wise reports as well as the ranking of the DCOs and the DPOs.
He further told that a total of 5,000 disciplinary measures had been adopted based on the data entry and feedback analysis by the CFMP from February 2012 to October 2015.The disciplinary measures include redressal of grievances, initiation of inquires, penalties, transfers, suspensions, termination of officers, and issuance of show cause notices or warnings. He said that the board had to struggle hard to get documents and record from the DCOs and the DPOs to update the dashboard. The Secretary I&C fully supported the board in this regard, he held. Talking about the dashboard developed by the PITB, he said it would be more user-friendly and the district administration and the Punjab government could check it easily.
An officer who attended the meeting on the status of CFMP requesting anonymity said that the CS Khizar Hayat Gondal was much concerned on the Punjab government’s monitoring program to curb corruption on grass root level. “Concealment of public feedback regarding delivery of services has been declared a crime in the province” the officer added.
Moreover, the DCOs and commissioners also make calls to inquire about corruption and take punitive actions.
He said that the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) had shared a negative feedback on service delivery with the secretaries and DCOs on CFMP. It was also brought to the notice of high ups that told that public sector bodies were concealing data from the monitoring system. Now, when the dashboard was not fully operational, the DCOs and the DPOs were not making field visits to ensure correct data entry including cell phone numbers of the service users.
The new system would accommodate increasing workload of data and through field monitoring by PITB and the S&GAD teams the concealment of data by the district authorities would be halted, the PITB officials claimed.