Ombudsman call for empowerment of citizens’ forums

The Ombudsman, Anastase Murekezi, yesterday presented the 2018/2019 annual report to members of both chambers of parliament. 

Murekezi pointed out that the citizens' Forums are not given enough time to analyse their fellows’ problems, noting that citizens lack of understanding of the laws that protect them is a challenge and contributes to injustice.

Ombudsman said that, with regard to the fight against corruption and injustice in various fields, among the applications received at the district level, 50% had been processed by the citizens counciles and that cases of corruption had been unveiled.

"You can give an example of the head of the  Rwanda Medical association, where a doctor plots with the nurses to set up a bank account for bribes so that one can have 'good medical test results'. We discovered that they were arrested temporarily but the courts released them so that they could be tried while still conducting their duties but we are following them closely," Murekezi said. 

He added; "The citizen’s forums work properly. But there are problems that need to be improved, especially the time allocated to serious problems that is not enough and we do not talk about these problems. And then some do not rely on the laws that are supposed to protect them and there are conflicts over land in families,". 

The Ombudsman report also indicates that all requests received since 2014-2015 through 2018-2019 as part of the District Injustice Prevention and Reduction Program, those resolved are 83.1%. And for the year 2018-2019, he indicated that 1,198 cases were filed on appeal following the injustice. 1,091 files or 91% were analyzed.

The parliamentarians also asked that the ombudsman office support more citizens' forums for them to be efficient and knowledgable.

The Office of the Ombudsman indicates that during the 2019-2010 exercise it will make more efforts to train the population on the misdeeds of corruption and injustice and organize training courses for lawyers and bailiffs on the resumption of lawsuits due to injustice.