Mohloai Mpesi

INADEQUATE budget allocation to the Office of the Ombudsman is hindering it from carrying out its investigations and executing its work efficiently, according to Ombudsman Advocate Tlotliso Polaki,

She spoke to the Sunday Express on Thursday at a workshop to develop her office’s strategic plan for the period 2025–2030 at Lancer’s Inn in Maseru.

Stakeholders such as the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO), media representatives, and public service officers were invited to provide input on shaping and improving the operations and effectiveness of the office.

Adv Polaki said the workshop was meant to determine what they needed to do for the next financial year and subsequent years in fulfillment of her office’s mandate.

“The strategic plan marks an important milestone in consolidating the achievements that the Office of the Ombudsman has made over the last ten years, and in providing the office and its stakeholders with a blueprint on how we will work together to deliver on the office’s constitutional mandate and achieve more transformational impacts,” she said in her opening remarks at the workshop.

In a side interview with the Sunday Express, she stated that the budget for the financial year 2024–2025 was very limited. She noted that a lack of independence and autonomy had added to their woes, as they were unable to design their own budget to sustain the office and help it execute all its mandates and investigations.

For 2024–2025, the Ombudsman’s office was allocated only M11,678,027—a sum she said was insufficient to cover all the office’s expenses.

Although the Ombudsman’s office is independent on paper, in practice it does not have full autonomy.

“It is true that the Ombudsman has independence, but she actually does not have full autonomy so that service delivery can happen swiftly, and the office can be run efficiently……

“Sadly, one of the problems that we still have is the lack of independence of the office. We are given a small allocation within the national budget, and we are always told to work within a specified ceiling, so we can never budget beyond a specific ceiling.”

She said her office was unable to meet all its mandates. They often had to return to the ministry and ask for more funds. If the institution were autonomous, the Ombudsman’s office would be able to draw its own budget and submit it straight to Parliament without the involvement of the ministries of Law and Justice and Finance and Development Planning.

“As much as we have this vision to ensure that the office grows, and the uptake of the complaints is much bigger and the investigations that we have are big and systemic investigations, the problem is with the allocation that we have—we have little to accommodate some of the plans that we have. We can only do so much with it. We always have to go back and request more.”

Adv Polaki stated that, among other objectives, the strategic plan meeting was going to help ensure that the office had enough resources, staff, and financial muscle.

“The strategic plan will help to ensure that the office has enough resources, both staff and finances, so that it can work efficiently according to a list of complaints we have to deal with because some of them are big and need the Ombudsman to be given enough money to execute them.

“These are systemic complaints that relate to ministries, not individuals. The office of Ombudsman needs to be self-reliant so that we can pass our issues swiftly and work for the public without any hindrance and without going through the government bureaucracy.”

She added: “We believe the office can work fast if it has its independence and autonomy to make our decisions but still account for all the budget like what government ministries do.”

She said they were going to officially open two offices—one in Butha-Buthe and another in Mohale’s Hoek—after 31 years of the office’s existence.

“This office has 31 years of existence, but the Ombudsman visited the districts to gather all the complaints and work on them. Currently, the Office of the Ombudsman does not have offices in the districts, but we are going to officially open them this year. It is going to happen for the first time this year.

“One is in Butha-Buthe while the other one is in Mohale’s Hoek, so we have to hire more staff.”

She said that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the DCEO as well as with other stakeholders such as the Auditor-General, the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Director of Public Protection, the Lesotho Mounted Police Services (LMPS), and the Central Bank of Lesotho to cooperate in fighting corruption.

“We have an existing MOU that we signed with DCEO, the Office of the Auditor-General, the FIU, DPP, LMPS, and the Central Bank last year.

“We must work with these offices in fighting corruption….We need to …..identify what kind of strategies we need to achieve the best results ……I  also have a mandate  to fight  corruption.

“We have a myriad of investigations that will be running together this year.”