By Robert Andre Emmanuel
Antigua and Barbuda’s Ombudsman, Dr Marion Blair, has expressed dismay at the lack of action and consideration shown by policymakers towards special reports by her office, calling her recommendations “destined to fail”.
She detailed a number of weaknesses in Antigua and Barbuda’s political system, including human rights, freedom of information and the ongoing lack of specific sexual harassment legislation.
Dr Blair highlighted that the conflict resolution procedure—one of the main tools of the Ombudsman—in its current form, is not fit for purpose.
The Ombudsman noted in her latest annual report that, under the Ombudsman Act 1994, complaints by the public and her office’s recommendations to address them are rarely acted upon.
According to Section 13 of the Act, after investigating a complaint, the Ombudsman should issue a recommendation to the relevant government agency. If no action is taken, it should be escalated to the relevant minister, then the Prime Minister, then to the Speaker of the House who will send the report to all parliamentarians.
If no adequate action is taken within a reasonable time, the Ombudsman will inform the complainant and make any necessary comments.
“The conflict resolution procedure serves no useful purpose for the poor man seeking justice. All it does is make the Ombudsman an apologist for government’s indifference, inactivity and lack of concern for the plight of the ordinary man. The complaint resolution procedure is merely window dressing,” Dr Blair wrote.
The Ombudsman gave the example of the sign language interpreter from state TV ABS, in which a complaint was filed by the interpreter due to the lack of upgraded salary—despite being included on a list of names recommended by state media for such—and confusion around her retirement age as a civil servant.
In 2017, the Antigua and Barbuda Social Security Board and the government took a decision to gradually increase the age of retirement for pensioners under the scheme from 60 to 65.
The departure of the sign language interpreter raised a number of human rights issues, according to the Ombudsman.
“Issues such as child rights violation, discrimination against persons with disability… there was no response to the special report.
“It seemed not to bother government that the departure of the sign language interpreter has a negative impact on the differently abled children,” she wrote.
The Ombudsman also referenced an ABS interview with the principal of the Adele School for Special Children, in which the principal sought to appeal to the public to learn sign language.
“In the special report, 2017, the Ombudsman recommended more equipment and teaching materials for special education teachers as well as more space for the children,” the report said.
In 2016, then Leader of Government Business in the Senate, former Senator Lennox Weston, announced plans to expand the Adele School with more teachers trained to support the children.
She also highlighted the lack of an explicit human rights mandate and the absence of an official national human rights institution for oversight, noting that international observers often used the Office of the Ombudsman for references, despite the law guiding the Ombudsman remaining unchanged for almost 30 years.
The Ombudsman said another major challenge facing her office was in obtaining information from government departments.
“There were delays, refusal to provide requested documents, failure to respond to communications, providing disinformation, misinformation or selective information, concealment or loss of files, officers not turning up on site visits, etc,” she wrote.
In one example, the Ombudsman highlighted that a lawyer threatened her office with a lawsuit if a letter which chided a “senior officer for pressuring a complainant to withdraw her complaint from the office of the Ombudsman was not retracted from his personal file”.
In another example, a senior official used government resources to hire a law firm to ask the Ombudsman why she needed two building inspectors to accompany her on a site visit regarding a building complaint.
“On the site visit, the problems were crystal clear, even to a layman. The homeowners were in gross violation of the building code as well as the legal setbacks from the boundary.
“Since the structures were approved by the authorities and given the officers did not show for the site visit, nothing could be done,” she expressed.
In her report, the Ombudsman said that there was a lack of public awareness about the role of the Ombudsman, noting that over the years, persons had shared complaints about “divorce, rape, child day care, marriage counselling, banking, extradition, police beating, delinquent fathers, feuding neighbours, fraud, rent, incest, car purchase, car accident, family land dispute, sexual harassment, lawyers’ woes, etc”.
Many of these complaints, she said, end up with the Ombudsman referring them to the relevant agencies or just providing a listening ear.
In 2017, political leaders and noted attorneys spoke about the need for the office of the Ombudsman to be strengthened and made more apolitical as a measure to protect whistle-blowers and combat corruption in the government.
However, the Ombudsman wrote that there has been no effort to do so, comparing the situation to a “toothless tiger…one that is severely undermined and powerless”.
According to the report, Parliament was said to have received this report in February 2024. It covers the period of 2022 to the end of 2023.
Read the Ombudsman’s full report by clicking this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OferAT9N2pvXSzJUVJmLxt5AO_js6gvu/view?usp=sharing
