The issue of case backlog that has been weighing down the Ombudsman’s Office for years has finally been fixed by a new law that requires that complainants petition the Ombudsman as a last resort.

Addressing journalists at her office yesterday, Deputy Ombudsman Odette Yankurije (prevention and fighting injustice) said that these new changes are meant to fix the issue of backlog of cases her office has been handling among other issues.

The new law, which was amended to replace the one that was passed in 2012, stipulates that a complainant can only petition the Ombudsman’s Office after exhausting all legal avenues up to the Supreme Court.

While those were the conditions in the previous law and a complainant had to write to the Ombudsman if they felt the verdict was unjust, the current law requires the complainant to instead write to a higher court than the one that delivered the judgment.

"For instance, if a case was tried by the Primary Court, the complainant is required to petition the Intermediary Court. If the case was tried by the Military Court, they write to the Military High Court.

"The President of the court that has been petitioned is required to review the case for any injustices and, if any are found, they write to the Supreme Court which will determine which court should try the case,” she explained.

Timelines

While the 2012 law had no timelines, the new law requires one to petition the court after the verdict exactly 30 days after the trial.

"The previous law was relaxed and some people could even petition six years after a verdict that they are complaining about was delivered. Not anymore. Whether you are writing to the court or petitioning the Ombudsman, you have only thirty days to lodge a complaint from the time you lose a case or from the time the court tells you that there is no case,” she said.

Early this year, while tabling the assessment of the Ombudsman’s 2016/2017 activity report, the Chairman of the Senatorial Social Affairs, Human Rights and Petitions Committee, Senator Gallican Niyongana, cited the issue of a backlog of cases involving injustice due to the bulk of those that are filed saying that it continues to be a challenge for the office.

"There is still a big number of injustice-related cases that are filed with the Ombudsman requesting for retrial leading the office to always have a backlog. In 2015 alone, only 1,033 dossiers representing 34.6 per cent, were handled,” he said.

To fix the backlog, the Ombudsman had resorted to "borrowing” staff and hiring contractual workers to speed up the process of sorting out the cases.

In 2016/2017 alone, 2,927 were filed, and of these, 1,742 were reviewed and only 107 were found to merit a retrial while the rest were dismissed.

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