OVER 2,000 people with problems with the government have been left hanging after the failure to appoint a new Ombudsman means the office is unable to process a single complaint.
The House of Representatives this week rejected the president’s nominee for the post, academic Andreas Kapardis, meaning the position has been left empty – and the department in limbo – since the end of last year.
One such couple lodged a complaint against the Interior Ministry on November 9 last year two months after their problem first arose, which was acknowledged on November 24 by Aristos Tsiartas, Head of the Cyprus Anti-Discrimination Body. After repeated follow-up calls, the couple found out on February 7 that no one could do anything about their case because there was no Ombudsman.
“It is just ridiculous, we are on the verge of giving up hope our problem will ever be solved,” they said.
What should have happened is that after the couple made their official complaint, the Ombudsman would chase up the relevant bodies who would then respond to the claim. The Ombudsman would decide if the case was indeed legitimate and suggest a course of action to all parties concerned. “According to the legislation, all power goes to the Ombudsman, the only one who can authorise officials to act on his behalf. In the absence of an Ombudsman no one can sign anything… no one is authorised to act on any existing or future complaints,” an official from the Ombudsman’s office said.
The relevant law does not provide for a second-in-command at the office, nor for the Ombudsman to delegate his authority to another person.
The office of the Ombudsman was created almost 20 years ago.
“It’s a question of proper management,” Kapardis said. “They should have thought to amend the law.”
“That’s what the law says,” Green Party’s George Perdikis and DIKO’s Andreas Angelides said, giving an identical response when asked to comment on the impasse.
“The law is problematic,” Perdikis added. “A committee should have been in place instead to prevent cases such as this where no one is in charge.
“The House of Representatives is also responsible,” Perdikis added. “They should have rejected the candidate immediately,” he said. The Cabinet decided on December 28 to appoint Kapardis and it took Parliament about seven weeks to reject him.
In the meantime, everything is at a standstill. The only thing that they can do over at the Ombudsman’s office is send a letter of recognition of receipt of a complaint. They cannot even check the status of pending claims.
The office receives an average of 3,000 complaints a year, while 115 complaints were filed this January, a figure lower than the expected 230 for the month. “Many complaints involve several organisations… we have to chase up all of them,” responded the office when asked why there was an accumulation of 2,300 odd complaints.
The office of the Ombudsman is a government independent post, which investigates people’s complaints against state organisations and representatives. These involve discrimination, working conditions and even claims of unlawful arrest. “Many claims are serious,” an official said.
In the past year, the majority of letters had to do with property complaints. Over 100,000 title deeds are currently pending due to property developers’ failure to make mortgage payments to the bank or else due to other legislative irregularities.
