Pakistan's Citizen Portal has stopped accepting new complaints for nearly a week, after the government's flagship grievance platform switched to read-only mode around November 4. Users can still view their complaint history and previous records, but they cannot file fresh complaints through the mobile application — and no restoration date has been announced.
A notice inside the app says the portal is "temporarily in Read-Only Mode due to a system upgrade" and that normal services will resume once the upgrade finishes. Beyond that, the notice offers no expected completion date, no progress update and no information about alternative channels for filing a complaint.
A week without new complaints
The Prime Minister's Office announced the temporary closure on November 4, saying the platform would remain unavailable for a few days while system upgrades and maintenance were carried out to improve its performance and services. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting circulated the announcement the same day.
The portal's app listing shows version 4.3 was released on November 4, the same day the restriction began, suggesting the upgrade and the app update landed together. Six days later, the portal remains in read-only mode. The government has not clarified publicly how long the upgrade will take, what exactly is being changed, or whether citizens were notified directly before the restriction began. Reports of technical issues with the portal had also surfaced in 2025.
A platform used by millions
Launched in October 2018, the Citizen Portal gave citizens a direct route to register grievances about police, revenue, municipal services, utilities and other public bodies, routing complaints to the relevant offices across federal and provincial departments.
Official figures put registered users at approximately 4.76 million, with about 6.66 million complaints received in total and around 6.55 million recorded as resolved. The Android app has crossed five million downloads on Google Play, where it was last updated on November 4 — the same day the read-only restriction began.
Questions still unanswered
The extended outage leaves several questions open. With no timeline in the app notice and no update from officials since the November 4 announcement, citizens with urgent grievances have no stated alternative for reaching the departments the portal was built to connect them with.
Until the upgrade is complete, the portal's millions of users can only watch their old complaints — not file new ones. The government has said the platform will return once the work is finished, but for now, there is no date for when that will be.
