Essay On The Role Of The Ombudsman In The Caribbean

Firstly, the notion of an ombudsman for the security of citizen’s rights has taken firm hold in the Commonwealth Caribbean. The workplace of the Commonwealth Ombudsman has initiated the operation on 1st July 1977. The office was set up by the Ombudsman Act 1976, as a component of another and unmistakable arrangement of authoritative law in Australia. The ombudsman plays a part alongside the courts and administrative tribunals in examining government administrative action. As of 2013, there are fifteen (15) ombudsman offices established in the Caribbean region, of which 11 are functioning with an ombudsman in office. These countries are Guyana, Trinidad, and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and Haiti. The commonwealth ombudsman deals with complaints about commonwealth governments departments and agencies responsible for the oversight of the commonwealth public interests scheme, and also inspection and monitoring of controlled operations and surveillance devices. However, the office of the ombudsman is also for private health insurance, overseas students, vet student loans, the defense force, immigration, law enforcement, the postal industry, the Australian Capital Territory and Norfolk Island. The

The role of the Guyana ombudsman is to investigate the complaints that individuals have been treated unfairly or have received poor service from government departments. The Guyana Ombudsman was human rights related, the reason given for recommending an Ombudsman was the possibility of there being cases of alleged racial discrimination in circumstances in which it would not have been desirable or reasonably practicable to invoke the Constitution in the Courts as a means of redress. This made it desirable to have "a simple, swift and in an expensive procedure for investigating such