We all swear at the hour we have to contact a public service and fix an issue. We most likely get confronted with a leisurely moving civil servant who has just hung up the phone -a private phone call, it’s understood. A rude woman who pretends to check long lists with numbers. A fatty right hand holding relaxed a pen and a fatty left hand holding a paper pile. A blond blowing smoke right into your face. An angry brunette who advices to “check next door” or “check upper floor” and even worst “You are in the wrong building” – and make you wonder, why do the wrong people always sit at the wrong desks and wrong floors. Why the Information desks have no information about anything…
The frustration of the Greek citizen seeking a public service is immense. The time you need to fix a thing can last from 2 hours for something it could need only 10 minutes and several days. Five in the average. And I am talking about easy to fix things like get together papers or even a simple thing like verifying a signature.
Many of us have noticed that things have grew up worst since the economic crisis erupted. And while we run desperately frome to here to there forth and backward and all around the civil service circle, here comes the report of Ombudsman to officially confirm what we have been experienced. The crisis has paralyzed the public services…..
Symptoms of paralysis in public services are showing in the Synigoros toy Politi Ombudsman’s annual report for 2010, which also confirmed that the range of economic distress threatens more and more Greeks.
The indroductory of the report stresses that “the independent body was flooded with reports, several of which were requests for assistance (indebted households, unemployed, businessmen in danger of bankruptcy, etc.), even on matters that fell outside its competence.”
The authors of the report also state that the spending cuts in the public services have a significant impact on the functioning of the public administration and a clear impact on the entire spectrum of relations between administration and citizens.
“Late payments, inadequate staffing in conjunction with the wave of retirements, reduced welfare services, delays in the provision of pensions and other social rights, overturning expectations for recruiting candidates in competitions are some of the issues that dominated 2010 ‘reports – complaints of citizens .
It describes an alarming picture of the levels of public administration to respond to legitimate demands of the citizens:
“The delay, failure to respond or failure to respect deadlines occur more and more frequently. They are probably related to the embarrassment of the administration when it finds it difficult to meet its obligations.”
Citizens also report incidents of discouragement from the side of public administration when it comes to excersice their rights or to get proper information. Some complaints refer also to incidents of refusing to register citizens’ complaints.
According to the statistics presented in the report, in 2010 the Ombudsman received 13,179 complain reports. Of these, within its competence was 59.8% of cases.
In total the Ombudsman found that 53.07% of the complaints were justified and there was bad public administration behaviour.
The Ombudsman stresses and underlines the urgent need to the proper functioning of institutions and the respect of citizens’ rights!
Don’t miss the charming Civil Servants Video ; it’s Spanish but applies veyr well to Greece too
