JHANG: The Prime Minister’s Office has taken a serious notice of disposal of a widow’s complaint filed on the PM Portal without giving relief and ensuring justice to her and directed the Punjab Highway Department (Maintenance and Repair) chief engineer to conduct an inquiry into the matter.
Haji Muhammad Hussain, a civil society activist, lodged a public complaint on the PM Portal in February 2021, in which he pointed out that a widow Mumtaz Bibi, a resident of Bagh Town (Toba Road), who had two sons and two daughters, with the help of local philanthropists, managed to establish a motorcycle wash outlet for her orphan sons. After a few days, a local influential person of the area, reportedly close to the PHD officials, came to the workplace of the orphan boys and allegedly demanded Rs 500 daily as a rent of the roadside place. The poor boys refused to accept the demand of the influential person by saying that they hardly earn only Rs 200 daily. On the next day, a team of PHD reached there and without any notice and giving them a chance to safely remove the water pump and other items, allegedly demolished the motorcycle wash outlet of the orphan boys which was reportedly not creating any kind of hurdle for anyone.
When the orphan boys argued with the PHD officials that why they were not removing all roadside encroachments, the PHD officials allegedly threatened the orphan boys of registering a police case against them.
The matter of the poor family was brought to the notice of the PHD high ups but to no avail. Later, the complainant filed a complaint of her on the PM Portal to get relief and justice. The PM Portal forwarded the complaint to the PHD (M&R) executive engineer of Jhang district, who allegedly without going through the complaint disposed of it by mentioning that the complaint had been resolved in March 2021.
Now, the PM Portal team took notice of the same complaint and reopened the same complaint from the PM tagline and directed the PHD (M&R) chief engineer to conduct an inquiry into the matter and also make a contact with the complainant for justice. When contacted, PHD (M&R) XEN Farid Anwar claimed that he took the right decision to dispose of the complaint received from the PM Portal in the light of the report submitted by the SDO and the sub-engineer concerned.