Who can complain to the president?

On Monday, the head of the state changed the procedures that regulate the consideration of citizens’ complaints. In a three-month time, it will be not possible to file complaints with the central government bodies and the office of the president.

Where can we complain to now?

The European Radio for Belarus has called the department at the Office of the President which handles citizens’ complaints. We came up with a made-up story that residents at a house in Minsk’s Frunzenski district were allegedly discontent with the performance of the local housing department officials. Eventually, we learned that going direct to the president’s office would even delay the processing of complaints.

Official: “You have no resolution from the district committee and the regional committee. Why would you need to file your complaint with the president’s office? We will forward your complaint back to the district committee, anyway. I am telling you this, because you can save your time. We keep a complaint for one week and then forward it to a lower authority. Under the new law, all the complaints will not go beyond the level of a regional committee”.

In the Baranavichy district committee, officials admitted that they considered fewer complaints from citizens this year compared to the previous year. The problems are normally resolved at the local district level. However, there were several people who approached the regional committee and even the president’s office. Alena Buhaeva, the official in charge of citizens’ complaints, believes that it is better to write first to the district committee and then to the higher authorities.

“The president’s office normally forwards a complaint down to a district committee with a resolution to respond to the complainer. Then, we inform this person about the response from the president’s office, so the people know that their case is under study at the district committee,” she said.

When asked whether it is common that the president’s office keeps correspondence with a complainer without involving the district committee, Alena Buhaeva said:

“There are several cases when the issue is serious and the president’s office decides to stay involved. Those are literally two or three categories of cases: housing allocation, gasification and road repairs”.

Therefore, you can complain to the president only about the housing conflicts, road repairs and gasification. Under the new regulation, this procedure resembles the appealing to the UN Human Rights Council. Before filing a complaint, you will have to exhaust all the national legal mechanisms.