House needs to give Ombudsman time

The raison d'être of the institution of the Ombudsman is to champion individuals who have been unfairly treated by public sector administrations, giving a voice to the weak and challenging the State.

It describes itself in the latest annual report as "the natural ally of Maltese individuals who have a justified claim to being overwhelmed by the State machinery..." and although "it will leave no stone unturned to safeguard social cohesion, democracy and the rule of law in the face of any action undertaken by government bodies that is considered wrong, unjust, unreasonable and discriminatory", unless the cases which are found to have a justifiable complaint are given redress, there seems little scope to the whole shebang.

It is therefore no wonder that the Ombudsman's report highlights the the failure of our parliamentarians to give the work of the Ombudsman's office its due attention.

The problem we have here is that the House Business Committee has so heavy a workload and commitments that the "Office of the Ombudsman" only makes the agenda once a year.

"One of the main objectives behind the establishment of the Ombudsman institution is not being fully attained... current arrangements are inadequate to promote the desired relationship between Parliament and the Ombudsman," says the report.

"No formal arrangements exist whereby members of this institution can take note of remarks made by the Ombudsman, consider his explanations, assess the legal and financial implications of his recommendations...

The Ombudsman gives examples of how other countries have select committees to "secure Parliament's involvement in cases where redress recommended by the Ombudsman is not awarded to an aggrieved complainant".

But there seems to be a catch-22 situation here, whereby Parliament does not seem to have enough MPs to cope with another select committee and the existing select committees cannot cope with any more commitments.

However a solution needs to be found if the institution is to survive.

The Ombudsman also criticised the media for not highlighting cases when injustices are not rectified despite Ombudsman's recommendations.

"What gives rise to concern to this Office (Ombudsman) is not disagreement with the opinions and views that are expressed by the Ombudsman but failure by the authorities concerned to remedy an injustice without the submission of a valid reason to justify their attitude", says the report.

Most of the hurdles to solving some complaints consisted of delays and non-replies by departments and government organisations. It was all well and good for departments and organisations to launch citizens' charters, but in various instances, such as at Maltacom, companies are not following that charter, the Ombudsman told a press conference at the report's launch.

The report refers to the "considerable discussion" following statements made by the Ombudsman in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday last September.

The Ombudsman had got quite a lot of flak for being forthright; he was slammed for making "inappropriate remarks" and as he was reported in The Times of June 17, "his complaint that the Armed Forces of Malta was in a mess had upset the prime minister", adding that his remarks were in fact conservative and "the AFM was in a hell of a mess".

The Ombudsman had been rightly incensed that his report on the AFM had been tabled in the House together with an OPM report which watered down his comments and observations.

He was left with no choice but to use the press to publicise certain injustices, some of which have since been rectified.

Of course the PM was upset - every government tries to hide certain things from public scrutiny. As recently as 1999, British citizens could only get information about safety and environmental problems, which were kept secret in their own country, through America under the US Freedom of Information Act.

The UK Freedom of Information Act received Royal Assent on November 30, 2000. However, the right of access will not come into force until January 2005.

A provision in the Act requiring authorities to produce publication schemes describing information they publish pro-actively, were phased in earlier, starting with central government departments in November 2002, said the UK Campaign for Freedom of Information.

Information available under the FOI Act had been kept secret from MPs. A House of Commons select committee investigating the collapse of the International Tin Council in 1985 found that its main information came from disclosures under the FOI Act.

The British government not only kept this information confidential, but also refused to discuss those documents that were released in America. The committee reported that government secrecy had "thwarted" its investigation.

Ministers at the time circulated a document saying FOI would "undermine accountability to Parliament". The campaign says this is nonsense. It says accountability cannot be weakened by providing more information. All that would be undermined is government's ability to withhold information simply because it might be embarrassing to it or inconvenient to the bureaucracy.

What is interesting is that the campaign says that "even tiny Malta, another Commonwealth country with a Westminster-type parliament, is committed to FOI legislation".

Pollution

I have been catching up with my backlog of interesting e-mails and one I received from Shaun Arrigo, one of our prime campaigners for marine protection and instigator of the Save our Seas Campaign, a few months back, deserves exposure.

According to disturbing new research, cruise liners are more like giant seaborne sewage farms, reported Jeremy Watson (Scotland on Sunday, March 2).

Considering the mushrooming of the cruise liner business and the importance we attach to their arrival here, readers will be interested to know that an average-sized cruise liner will produce around 30,000 gallons of sewage per day, according to a report by the US-based Ocean Conservancy pressure group.

In addition, 255,000 gallons of 'grey' water from laundries, showers, sinks and dishwashers are also likely to be dumped at sea on a daily basis.

Other discharges include 37,000 gallons of oily bilge water and 15 gallons of toxic waste from dry-cleaning, painting and photograph-processing.

The alert has been raised by Struan Stevenson, the Scottish member of the European Parliament, who is also president of its fisheries committee. Stevenson wants rigorous environmental standards to be introduced to protect fragile marine systems.

"I am alarmed that the same rigorous environmental standards which we apply to our towns, cities and industries are not applied to these cruise ships, despite the fact that this is a rapidly expanding sector," Stevenson said. "We need an international set of regulations to bring them under some form of control."

A new law passed by the state legislature last June made Alaska the first US state to regulate wastewater discharges from cruise ships, this law also expanded to include the regulation of air emissions.

The cruise industry's environmental performance between 1993 and 1998 was summed up in a report from the General Accounting Office, which found that cruise ships were involved in 87 confirmed cases of illegal discharges of oil, garbage and hazardous wastes into US waters and had paid more than $30 million in fines. The GAO, though, also found that 72 per cent of the pollution incidents were caused by accident.

According to a study done by the Cape Decision International Services in Alaska, an average cruise ship produces between 158,000 and 272,000 gallons of greywater and treated blackwater a day.

The largest cruise ships, of the 223 worldwide, are capable of carrying 5,000 people and can generate about two million gallons of waste water every week, Bluewater Network reported.

So the next time you admire a huge liner in Grand Harbour think that Alaska regulates waste water discharges and air emissions from cruise liners, but Alaska is a long way away.