QUOTE: "The President said he hopes that Guyanese will make full use of the Office of the Ombudsman not that it is up and running." Regrettably, Gilbakka finds no good ground for optimism, based on past experience. Guyana's first Ombudsman, Gordon Gillette, was appointed in 1966. One year later Mr Gillette reported: "While I continued for the most part to receive willing cooperation from officers of the Ministries and Departments, as time went by there seemed to be growing tendency in some cases to regard communications from my office as not so urgent in consequence of which my investigations were held up while officers took their time to reply or in a few cases even failed to reply to requests for information." In 1998, i.e., 31 years after Ombudsman Gillette's report, another Ombudsman asserted that "the situation remains unaltered." That Ombudsman was Justice Sheik Mohamed. Justice Mohamed explained his function thus: "The Ombudsman acts as an independent watchdog over government departments, agencies and their officers. He oversees through complaints, their doings, non-doings and misdeeds. He investigates and reports upon citizens' grievances against acts of government. He is the guardian against injustice and hardship which result from maladministration. He is looked upon as the citizens' defender or the complaints man." Ombudsman Mohamed complained that while he was responsible for investigating complaints from citizens throughout Guyana, his office had a staff of only 8, including himself.

He added: "The Ombudsman has no investigator to carry out field investigations. All investigations are done by correspondence. Some correspondence from the Ombudsman is answered within a reasonable time, other letters are answered after several reminders, while others are not answered at all. Some heads of government departments and other agencies, through error or indifference, have little regard for the correspondence of the Ombudsman. Some of them, it appears, look upon the Ombudsman as a meddler meddling in their affairs." Justice Mohamed's woes didn't end there. "Also," he said, "there have been delays in implementing my recommendations (after an investigation)." This grim report by Ombudsman Mohamed, written in 1998 under the PPP/C watch, does not give cause for optimism that the situation will improve markedly under newly appointed Ombudsman Winston Moore. After all, Justice Sheik Mohamed retired since 2005. Why did the PPP/C regime take so long to appoint a new Ombudsman?

During the past 8 years Guyanese couldn't lodge grievances to an Ombudsman while widespread abuses of power were reported in the mass media. Justice Moore says he has secured a few concessions from President Ramotar regarding staffing and resources. Good for him. Let us see whether the little Caesars in government ministries will respond to his correspondence in a better manner than they responded to Ombudsman Sheik Mohamed. Gilbakka is watching.