More complaints being filed over benefits, Lottides says

More complaints are being filed to the ombudswoman’s office over benefits it emerged on Thursday, as ombudswoman Maria Stylianou-Lottides handed over the annual reports for 2021 and 2022 to President Nikos Christodoulides.

In a meeting at the presidential palace, Lottides remarked that “on the cover of the annual report for 2022 we have our evaluation by the United Nations with status A, something that was also helped by the change in the process for appointing the ombudswoman.”

Lottides also handed over separate reports for the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Body, as well as the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture.

The ombudswoman said the reports reveal an increase in citizens’ complaints about issues surrounding their benefits, adding that civil service issues were slightly lower compared to disability issues.

She underlined that although there are not many reports of discrimination, complaints over disabilities are present.

Christodoulides remarked the government places great importance on her reports saying that it “was perfectly natural that the majority of complaints concern benefits, and social policy, which are important matters for us.”

“It is for this reason that I often say that a responsible fiscal policy is the one that will allow us to respond to the demands of society, to the complaints that are made, most of which I fully understand.”

He added that the government approaches non-governmental organisations as partners, considering that in many cases the requests they make are perfectly justified.

Christodoulides cited an example where he said “I had a meeting with organised groups for people with disabilities, and one of the issues we discussed, and I even decided to proceed immediately with a public consultation which will start on January 15 so that we can immediately afterwards promote legislation in parliament, concerns the benefit policy, as well as the fact that there is no uniform legislation for disabled people.”