The Ombudsman, Anastase Murekezi, yesterday presented his 2018/2019 annual report to members of both chambers of parliament.
The report makes recommendations in the areas of the office’s mandate to fight corruption and injustice, declaration of assets by public officials, and assessing whether laws governing access to information and leadership code of conduct among others are being adhered to during the period in review.
Murekezi told the parliamentarians that of the 1,091 cases filed with the Ombudsman requesting retrial on the basis of unfairness, 851 were civil lawsuits, mostly which are land-related.
Some of these are directly related to inheritance issues.
118 are related to criminal cases, 69 are commercial cases, and 30 constitutional while 23 are related to labor.
Murekezi said that after a thorough analysis of the cases, only 96 merited retrials, something that indicates that Rwandans need to be sensitized about the value of courts and time.
“In 2018/2019, we had 1,091 cases. Of these, the ones that we felt required fresh trials are 96 only. That shows you that there is a serious problem where the masses are wasting time and court resources,” he said.
He pointed out that an assessment carried out by his office for the last five years had indicated that the ombudsman’s office had reviewed 5273 cases.
Of these, 5343 had been rejected while 433 were found to be unjust.
Murekezi also criticized local leaders whose citizens’ forums with the locals only deal with small matters instead of digging deeper.
“They don’t do any follow-ups. They fail to complete cases and this is costing locals’ money because they are obliged to pay more yet these are issues that can be fixed by an executive secretary,” he said.
He informed the parliament that unlike the previous years, his office’s activities were now fully funded by the European Union for the next three years.
Src: The New Times
