Editorial

A Bill has just been published containing amendments to the Ombudsman Act. The draft legislation proposes a wider definition of government entities from whose decisions the citizen may complain to the Ombudsman. These include government agencies established under the Public Administration Act 2009, government foundations and any chairman, member of a board, committee, commission or other decision-making body making decisions that affect the public.

The Bill will strengthen the institution of the Ombudsman by enabling him to investigate complaints dealing with maladministration insofar as the whole public sector is concerned. Here, perhaps, the Bill can even go further by empowering the Ombudsman to investigate even privatised companies that render services hitherto provided by the government, such as telecommunications and postal services. These services are also the subject of complaints by citizens but, as things stand, members of the public cannot complain to the Ombudsman once such services are not offered by the government or its entities. Pity because, given the fact that the government has and is still embarking on the privatisation of more and more services, making private service providers accountable to the public is becoming increasingly more relevant.

Perhaps the landmark initiative of this Bill is that it will group sectoral Ombudsmen within the office of the Ombudsman. Today, as the law stands, there are a number of Ombudsmen that are appointed for particular sectors. Each sectoral Ombudsman is appointed under a different law than that of the Ombudsman and not all such laws contain the same level of detail as to how investigations into citizen complaints should be conducted.

The Bill correctly attempts to bring about a harmonised procedure into administrative investigations to be followed by these sectoral Ombudsmen, which the Bill now designates as Commissioners. The Commissioners, when appointed, will be served by the Office of the Ombudsman even if they will still retain their independence from his Office in their decision making.

What appears lacking in the Bill and, hopefully, will be addressed when discussed in committee stage in the House, is the strengthening of the role of Parliament in providing redress to citizens. The Ombudsman does not deliver binding decisions but recommendations addressed to the public administration. At times, the latter does not implement all the Ombudsman's recommendations. This is not done capriciously but for valid reasons. This can be deduced from the bulk of the Ombudsman's recommendations being implemented by the public administration.

But there still remain those handful of complaints where the citizens' grievances remain unsatisfied. In such cases, the citizen should be entitled to a remedy, more so where the Ombudsman has found in favour of the citizen. Parliament should, thus, play a more active role in ensuring that any unsolved complaints are settled in the best interests of good administration and to satisfy the legitimate expectations of citizens with the implementation of the remedy recommended by the Ombudsman.

One augurs that the Bill will empower the citizen against governmental maladministration while providing adequate means of redress to the citizen by Parliament in those cases where the public administration fails to implement adequately the Ombudsman's recommendations.