NA Body Asked To Improve HR Ministry Helpline Mechanism

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Feb, 2017 ) : National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on Human Rights Monday directed Ministry of Human Rights (MOHR) to improve functioning and mechanism of its helpline 1099 for making it more beneficial for victims of vulnerable people.

Chairing the committee meeting, Member National Assembly Baber Nawaz Khan directed that more people would be hired for affective working of the helpline, including law officers, councilors, IT official and other relevant staff to facilitate people through helpline.

Discussing the agenda of `Scrutiny of Budgetary Proposals relating to Public Sector Development Programme 2017-18, Ministry of Human Rights and its attach departments' the committee members expressed their concerns for not attending calls at helpline.

In response, Director General Human Rights, Muhammad Arshad informed the body members that they had extended their telephone lines from three to eight recently to cater the calls load but the new five lines were not functional yet due to which callers were facing problems.

He informed that the issue would be resolved soon and every caller would be entertained properly to address their grievances. He informed the committee that helpline had so far received 54,919 calls since its inception last year.

He shared that only seven percent calls were relevant to the helpline service delivery and they had provided legal advise to 2,426 calls during the said period.

He informed that they had proposed a budget of Rs 25 million for the next fiscal year which was unanimously approved by the committee members.

The committee members further informed that Rs 12 million had been demanded for Implementation of Action Plan for Human Rights in Pakistan for the next budget while Rs 150 million had been proposed for Establishing National Institute of Human Rights Islamabad and Acquisition of Land and Construction of Building for National Institute of Human Rights, including 25 million and 126 million respectively.

The ministry has informed that they have suggested Rs 100 million for constructing working women hostel at G-6/2 and G-7/3 Islamabad. The ministry officials informed that there was a severe issue of working women accommodation in the Federal capital and the land for hostels had already been allocated.

The committee members have unanimously approved all the budget proposals for the next year unanimously while the other agenda items of the meeting including consideration of `The Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace (Amendment), Bill 2014, consideration of `The National Commission on the Status of Women (Amendment) Bill 2016 and Consideration of `The Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace (Amendment) Bill 2016 were deferred.