12 Mar 2013

 Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi has told Parliament that since its inception, the Office of the Ombudsman has received and investigated over 10 000 complaints with a completion rate of about 65 per cent.

In his presentation of the budget for the Office of the Ombudsman, he said in 2012 alone, the Ombudsman received 713 and 263 complaints from Gaborone and Francistown and their surrounding areas respectively, he said.

Minister Masisi also said there was a decrease of 310 cases from the previous year where a total of 1 023 cases were received from the two offices.

He added that a total of 441 cases were completed during the same period thus a relatively low resolution rate meant that 38.15 per cent of the cases received were carried forward.

That, he added, impacted negatively on the turnaround time which he said stood at about eight months.

He further stated that the continued non-responsiveness of ministries and government agencies as well as acute shortage of investigative staff with 18 officers covering the whole country as some of the challenges that the Office of the Ombudsman was faced with.

He noted that the Ombudsman only had offices in Gaborone and Francistown which made it difficult for people in the outer areas to access their services or for the few legal investigators to follow complaints to the countryside.

Nonetheless, the minister pointed out that in its efforts to address delays in disposing of complaints, the office had recently re-engineered its processes to make them shorter and quicker.  

Parliament also heard that low levels of public awareness about the Ombudsman continued to be a challenge with recent surveys showing that the office was only known by 67 per cent of urban and 35 per cent of rural residents.

Mr Masisi explained that this was mainly due to the absence of a public education unit.

The minister also told Parliament that with the assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ombudsman has developed and commenced implementing its communications strategy. ENDS