Ombudsman gets 28,000 complaints in 25 years

THE OFFICE of the Ombudsman received over 28,000 complaints over the 25 years of its existence. Most of those complaints were from prisoners. In addition to submitting annual reports to Parliament, however, the Ombudsman was forced to submit more than 30 special reports, because of the failure by the relevant authorities to deal with his recommendations to correct certain injustices he felt were of public importance.

The information is contained in the booklet 25 years of Ombudsmanship (1978-2003), which was released by the Ombudsman’s office yesterday. The Ombudsman is George Edoo. His predecessor was Justice Evan Rees. Edoo said under Section 96 (4), where a matter was of sufficient public importance in his opinion, or where he had made a recommendation under Section 96 (2) and within the time specified by him, no sufficient action had been taken to remedy the injustice, he was entitled to lay a special report before Parliament. He pointed out that during the 25-year history of the office, “more than 30 such reports have been presented to Parliament.”

He said the office received a total of 28,721 complaints over the 25-year period, that is, just over 1,000 complaints a year. He said complaints from prisoners formed one of the largest categories. Many of those complaints related to prison conditions — accommodation, meals, medical care and welfare and he pointed out that because of the routine visits made to the prisons by either himself or an investigator, in many cases the complaints were settled on the spot. The booklet shows that the percentage of complaints concluded during the 25 years was mostly below 50 percent, except for 1991, when there was a 73.1 percent conclusion. The lowest percentage of concluded reports was in 1989, when it was nine percent. In 2002, the highest number of complaints was received from the Local Government bodies — 162, which was followed by the Tobago House of Assembly with 137 complaints.