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Guyana finally gets another Ombudsman
After eight years without filling the key position, Guyana has finally appointed an Ombudsman, Attorney- at- Law, former Justice Winston Moore.
Newly appointed Ombudsman, Justice Winston Moore.
The announcement was made via a press statement sent out by the Office of the President.
According to that release, Justice Moore will be sworn in come next January, prior to him assuming office at the Brickdam Chambers of the Ombudsman. The Attorney is currently in private practice.
While executives of some developed and developing countries across the world have designated several Ombudsmen, Guyana, for a long time, was without one.
An Ombudsman is an official usually appointed by the government or by Parliament but with a significant degree of independence. One such official is charged with representing the interests of the public by investigating and addressing complaints of maladministration or violation of rights.
The typical duties of an Ombudsman are to investigate complaints and attempt to resolve them. Ombudsmen sometimes also aim to identify systemic issues leading to poor service or breaches of people’s rights.
Guyana has been without an Ombudsman since the retirement of Justice Sheik Mohamed in 2005.
A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) recently called for a fully staffed office of the Ombudsman to be reintroduced as opposed to the previous set up that existed.
That call was made by APNU’s Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine as he responded to a question about the Party’s interest in seeing a functioning Office of the Ombudsman.
Dr. Roopnaraine had said that the Office of the Ombudsman is an extremely important Constitutional protection for citizens in Guyana. He highlighted that an Ombudsman is supposed to deal with faults in administration and stated “as we know those are not going away, they are increasing; so we definitely are in need of an Ombudsman.”
Further, Dr. Roopnaraine asserted that it would be a waste of time to just appoint an Ombudsman and a secretary which was the case when Justice Mohamed was in that office.
“It is not simply the appointment of an Ombudsman, but a real staffing to go with the office. He has to have more than a secretary…which is all Justice Mohamed had. He has to have investigative capacity and so on. Without a fully staffed and empowered Office of the Ombudsman, merely appointing an Ombudsman will do very little.”
APNU Member of Parliament James Bond had posed questions in relation to the non-appointment of an Ombudsman to the Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, in the National Assembly earlier this year.
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