BackIn compliance with article 23, paragraph 1, of his Statute, the Portuguese Ombudsman, Mr. Alfredo José de Sousa, has formally delivered his 2012 Report of Activities to the President of the Portuguese Parliament.
The Report reveals that in 2012 the Portuguese Ombudsman opened 7027 cases, of which 7015 stemmed from a complaint and 12 from his own initiative. This represented an increase of 1215 cases, i.e. 21%, in relation to 2011. In total, 27218 complainants addressed the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman received an additional 1430 communications that were either anonymous or generic in nature and thus were dismissed without further investigation. The same happened with the 1290 complaints submitted to the Ombudsman that did not fall within his scope of competence.
Matters relating to social rights and to the rights of workers topped the list of issues addressed in the cases opened in 2012. The central administration was concerned in over 50% of the cases, with the Ministry of Solidarity and Social Security and the Ministry of Finance at the top of the list. As for local administration, the municipality of Lisbon was the most often concerned.
In 2012 the Portuguese Ombudsman issued 35 recommendations and, at the end of the year, 20 had already been accepted. From the remaining 15 recommendations, 4 were not accepted, 3 did not receive a reply and in 8 either the deadline for a reply has not yet expired or dialogue with the concerned entities is still ongoing.
In the area of constitutionality review, after assessing 65 cases the Ombudsman decided to request the intervention of the Constitutional Court in 2 of them.
In 2012, the Ombudsman’s toll-free Children’s Hotline, Elderly Citizens Hotline and Citizens with Disabilities Hotline received 682, 2950 and 180 calls, respectively. The issues most often addressed to the Children’s Hotline were the exercise of parental responsibilities, cases of physical and psychological abuse and cases of negligence. In the Elderly Citizens Hotline, the questions most frequently raised related to health, requests for useful contacts and information about rights. The Citizens with Disabilities Hotline was mostly contacted about legislation and family obligations, discrimination and violation of rights and attribution and verification of the degree of incapacity.
Out of the 7027 cases that were opened, 2198 resulted from complaints submitted via regular post, 4162 from complaints submitted through electronic means and 655 from complaints presented in person at the Office of the Ombudsman. Electronic complaints are still the majority, representing 60% of the complaints that were received.
The website of the Portuguese Ombudsman received 107327 visitors and the number of references to the Ombudsman made by the media grew 23,3%.
The full text of the Report, in Portuguese, can be accessed online at the Ombudsman's website.
source: Portuguese Ombudsman
