The Prijedor Ombudsmen Received 2000 Petitions This Year

“From the day we opened the Office of the Ombudsman in Prijedor four years ago, the Office has received 2,036 individual petitions by citizens who complain of violations of their human and civil rights,” said Sanda Josic, the Deputy Ombudsman of the Republic of Srpska and head of the Prijedor Office. The greatest number of petitions were received in 2001, due to the dissatisfaction of the citizens with the manner in which the property issues were solved, i.e. the return of pre-war owners to their property. “After the completion of implementation of property legislation in Prijedor, the problems of that category of people were solved. Today, the Ombudsman deals mostly with complaints filed by citizens regarding the work of the judiciary, as well as irregularities in the work of communal services. At this time, the scope of work of our Office has been reduced to warning the judiciary about the slowness of procedures. At the same time, we refrain from commenting on the decisions of the Courts,” says Ms. Josic. As of late, we register an increase in the number of petitions related to labour rights violations. The majority of petitions were submitted by the employees of ‘Celpak”, a company that has declared bankruptcy. In 2004, some 2000 citizens addressed the Office of the Ombudsman in Prijedor in an attempt to point out at serious cases of human rights violations.

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