Thousands of fake complaints on Pakistan Citizen Portal are affecting its performance

The government of Pakistan launched the Pakistan Citizens Portal with an aim to address and resolve the complaints of citizens and to provide a better way to connect government officials with the general public. Through this portal citizens have the ability to directly file a complaint regarding any kind of issue they face, for it to be transferred to the concerned authorities for proper action.

But in the past few weeks, the performance of the portal has reduced, due to a large number of fake complaints being lodged in the portal through fake accounts. According to the PM Delivery Unit, a total of 44,623 fake accounts have been removed from the portal after warnings. Apart from them over 51,000 profiles are still unverified, while the authorities have issued warnings to 7000 unverified profiles as well.

The portal was launched by the government in October 2018, and since then a total of 617,000 complaints have been resolved and the total number of registered accounts at the portal stands at 0.95 million.

The Pakistan Citizen Portal application was developed by a team from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa free of cost and the government actually went on to use it as a medium to register public queries. The complaint registry platform has a rating of 4.5 on the Google Play Store and has remained on the top in the app store listing. The app also received an award of 2nd best government application from around the globe.

The government of Pakistan launched this application to address the issues of the public, but with the fake accounts and complaints being registered on the portal the authorities are failing to perform their duties properly. The government has advised the unverified account holders to verify their accounts properly by re-entering relevant details on the Citizens Portal.