The Ombudsman, Beverley Wakeham, told a Parliamentary committee that her office has too much work and too few staff. She needs another $1m to employ extra staff and for general administration.
The job of the Ombudsman office is to deal with complaints about government departments or organisations. The office now has 48 staff members and is expected to cope with a work load of 800 to 1000 complaints at any one time. Now they are having to cope with nearly double that number – at the moment they are dealing with 1854 cases. They have 300 cases waiting but they do not have enough staff to deal with these cases. There are 270 complaints against EQC and CERA – both organizations responsible for the earthquake recovery in Christchurch.
The word “ombudsman” is Swedish. New Zealand borrowed the idea of an ombudsman and the word from Sweden. We also have an ombudsman for Insurance and Security, and another for Banking. There is also a complaints commissioner, which is similar to an ombudsman, for Electricity and Gas.
Vocabulary
administration – office work
deal with – manage, work on
cope – manage successfully
work load – how much work someone has to do
Questions
Does your country have an ombudsman or something similar? The International Ombudsman Institute has more than 20 member countries.
Why is an ombudsman office important in a democracy?