The Ministry of Education (MoE), the Malawi Police Service (MPS) and Ministry of Health (MoH) rank highest in cases lodged against government institutions at the Office of the Ombudsman in the past five years.

 The complaints, mostly from employees, are labour-related bordering on unfair dismissal, compensations and unfair treatment.

Other complaints from the public focus on poor service delivery, the ombudsman’s annual reports filed to Parliament, which we have examined show.

While MPS and MoH have been constantly alternating between positions two and three, the Education ministry has always ranked top in annual rankings since 2015.

Malera: 319 cases are labour-related

In an interview, Ombudsman spokesperson Arthur Semba attributed the two ministries and police dominance on the blacklist to their expansive workforce.

  “As most complaints we receive are work-related, it is not surprising that for the past five years the three institutions have had the most cases. That, however, should not be the justification for wrongdoing,” he said.

MoE spokesperson Chikondi Chimala put the ministry’s workforce at around 100 000.

In 2015, MoE accumulated 57 complaints, MPS, on second had 30 while MoH raked in 22. The following year, MoE had 44, MoH, on second, registered 18 while the Police accumulated 13.

In 2018, the Ombudsman annual report showed that Moest had accumulated 221 complaints; police had 84 while MoH stood at 71.

In the most recently released annual report focusing on 2020, it was only the Police which was shoved out of the top three in four consecutive years with the Judiciary taking over its place.

 “Ministry of Education remains the MDA which has been complained against in the year under review with 77 complaints. This has been the trend for the past five years. The Judiciary came second with 49 complaints; the Ministry of Health was third on the list with 47 complaints; Malawi Police has dropped to fourth with 40 complaints,” reads the report dated October 31 2021.

Ironically, during the period the Ombudsman observed there were more complaints related to service delivery than in the previous years where employment complaints accounted for around 90 percent.

Reports the Ombudsman Grace Malera: “Of the 1142 cases, 601 complaints received and admitted were under ordinary investigations in the office, 319 cases are labour-related while 282 complaints are service-related complaints.

“This indicates that people have grasped the role of the Office in its entirety. In the past five years the gap between labour-related cases and service-related cases was too big but now it is getting smaller.”

In an interview yesterday, MoE principal secretary Chikondano Mussa linked the complaints at the Ombudsman’s office to misbehaviour among teachers.

She said: “Some teachers choose to be absent from work for five consecutive days, without taking leave of the head teacher and public service regulations have a clear action on that. The remedy for abscondment is dismissal.”

 The national police spokesperson James Kadadzera said he would not immediately comment until he gets the specific complaints launched against the MPS.

MoH had not responded to our questionnaire as we went for press.

The post Ombudsman’s blacklist appeared first on The Nation Online.