Pildat's governance survey: Punjab's governance bags highest 67 percent approval rating

Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency (Pildat) on Wednesday released a report pertaining to nationwide public opinion poll assessing quality of governance and democracy across federal and provincial governments. According to the report, governance in Punjab is rated at the highest across nationwide respondents with 67 percent approval ratings followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 38 percent approval rating.
The governance in Balochistan is rated third with 26 percent while Sindh is rated the lowest nationwide with 25 percent approval rating. Pildat conducted public survey regarding standards of governance and democracy of the federal and provincial governments from August 11 to August 31, 2016 while 3,610 people from 85 districts across the country participated in the survey.
The respondents termed terrorism a biggest current issue followed by inflation and energy crisis. The survey concluded that armed forces were found a most trusted institution with 76 percent approval rating in 2016 compared to 75 percent in 2015 while police have lowest public trust as only 18 percent nationwide respondents have rated it positively. When respondents were asked to evaluate performance of their own province on individual governance indicators, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa received the most positive approval ratings for 18 out of 25 indicators.
However, Balochistan bagged third position with positive rating of 12 out of 25 indicators. As many as 58 percent of the nationwide respondents termed Prime Minister's performance positively in 2016 while 41 percent rated it negatively. This has seen a sharp decline of 15 percentage points from 73 percent approval rating in 2015. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) continues to suffer from negative public perception as only 35 percent of nationwide respondents were found hopeful regarding improved performance of the ECP for the next general elections. This registered a 3 percentage point decline since 2015.