Human Rights Directorate disposes of 500 complaints

PESHAWAR: The Human Rights Directorate Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has successfully disposed of 500 complaints about human rights violations in 2015 by providing expeditious relief to the people.

“The first ever Human Rights Directorate in the country received 48 complaints in two years of 2012 and 2013. We have received 514 human rights complaints in 2015, out of which 500 were successfully disposed of,” said a Director, Human Rights Directorate, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Noor Zaman Khattak.

He was speaking at a seminar under a title “Awareness of Human Rights” organised by Human Rights Directorate in collaboration with Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Civil Society Network on Thursday.

The official said that currently only 14 human rights violation complaints are pending in the directorate. He said first the provincial government in 2012 established the first-ever Human Rights Directorate through executive order. Then in 2013 an ordinance was issued for running the affairs of the directorate.

However, he said all credit goes to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led provincial government to enact the ‘KP Promotion, Protection and Enforcement of Human Rights Act 2014’ for the Human Rights Directorate (HRD) and then framed rules for the directorate.

The director vowed to protect the basic human rights of the people of the province at all costs. He asked government departments to respond in time to the directives of the directorate on the complaints about human rights or else they would face actions.

To a question, the director said under Section 7 of the act, all the non-government organizations (NGOs) working on human rights issues in the province would register themselves with the directorate and submit their annual report to the body.

He warned that the licenses of the NGOs would be cancelled if they were not registered with the directorate. “We are going to issue notices to the NGOs to get themselves registered with the directorate,” he added. 

Speaking on the occasion, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Imtiaz Shahid Quresh, has said that the PTI-led provincial government was giving priority to the basic human rights issues of the people and that was why established the HRD through a law and framed rules for the directorate to effectively deal with the complaints of human rights.

The provincial government, he said had given suo moto power for inquiry into the complaints and also made him powerful to deal with the cases effectively.

About the PTI-led provincial government performance, the minister said that the government had made a record and important legislation within two and a half years. The provincial government, he said, was also going to bring ‘Law Reforms’ in the laws and the government had already made a committee under the head of the law minister for the purpose.

He said the provincial government was also going to pass another important bill called “Conflict of Interests Bill” from the KP Assembly to restrict the bureaucrats, cabinet members and legislators from using their office of personnel interests or benefits.

Unfortunately, he said, the opposition members of the KP Assembly were opposing the Conflict of Interests Bill and thus it had been delayed for removing reservations of the opposition over the bill.

The minister said that the government was also going to further amend the RTI Act and Ehtesab Act for further betterment.