the monitor

Ombudsman case resolution remains below 40%

Machana Shamukuni PIC: KENNEDY RAMOKONE
Machana Shamukuni PIC: KENNEDY RAMOKONE

‘Delayed justice is justice denied’, as complainants at the Office of the Ombudsman continue to grapple with delayed justice in cases the organisation struggles to resolve, with a resolution rate below 40%.

Justice minister, Machana Shamukuni, acknowledged a slight improvement in the case resolution rate but stressed the need for higher efficiency when presenting the 2024-2025 financial year budget estimates for the Office of the Ombudsman to the Committee of Supply in Parliament last week.

During the financial year 2023-2024, the Office of the Ombudsman registered 2,058 new complaints by January 2024, a significant increase from 695 in the previous year. He said out of this total, 395 complaints were resolved, marking a resolution rate of 38.46%, an improvement from the previous year's 31%.

However, the minister said, a cumulative backlog of 956 complaints from previous years remained, with 340 completed, resulting in a resolution rate of 35.56% on carried-forward complaints. "The total caseload for the financial year 2022-2023, including new cases and those from previous years, was 2014.

Of these, 731 cases were completed, giving an overall resolution rate of 36.39% as of the end of January 2024," he explained. "From the above statistics, it is noticeable that the Office of the Ombudsman continues to resolve cases, although one may hope for a higher resolution rate," he added.

He attributed the low-resolution rate to factors such as non-response or delayed response by ministries and instances where investigations are complete but corrective action lags, causing delays in closing case files.

The Office of the Ombudsman, mandated by law to investigate and redress administrative actions on behalf of the government and protect human rights, faces challenges in meeting timely resolutions.

The Ombudsman recommends remedial action when injustice is identified due to alleged maladministration or human rights violations. Shamukuni proposed a budget of P71,630,690 for recurrent expenditure and P9,444,999 for development expenditure for the Financial Year 2024-2025.

Editor's Comment
The people have spoken

In fact, early election results in some areas across the country, speak to large voter turnout which suggests that voters crowded at polling stations to decide appropriately. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) revealed that 80% of the 1,037,684 people who had registered to vote turned up to exercise their right.It’s unfortunate that at the time of cobbling this editorial comment, results had just started trickling in. We recognise that...

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