PETALING JAYA: When a schoolgirl was sexually abused by another secondary student in Ireland, she was made to feel responsible – the school told her it was a behavioural issue.

Worse, she was made to meet the abuser, while other students bullied her when they found out.

Enter the Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO).

It investigated the case, and the school had to apologise to the victim while the school’s board updated policies to reflect best practices.

The National Education Department also included this form of bullying in its national anti-bullying action plan.

We have cases like that in Malaysia, too, and that is why an ombudsman of our own is needed.

In one case, an English teacher at a school in Kota Belud, Sabah, went missing for nearly the entire school term, and his student failed the subject in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination.

Then, mothers married to foreign spouses were unable to pass Malaysian citizenship to their children due to certain laws in the country.

In both cases, the affected citizens had to spend thousands of ringgit and countless hours in court seeking redress for these problems, which arose from problematic policies or practices that protect errant civil servants.

There are also people who were turned away from government counters because they were deemed to be inappropriately dressed.

A Malaysian Ombudsman Office could have tackled these issues, says an NGO that has been working with the government to set up the institution.

The Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) sits on the steering committee to develop the Ombudsman Bill.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word ombudsman originates from the Swedish term “representative” and refers to an independent individual appointed to investigate complaints against a body or institution.

The students in Sabah and the Malaysian mothers with foreign spouses would not have had to spend all that time in court if there had been an ombudsman’s office, says C4.

“The SMK Taun Gusi case would be a good example, as the complaints were made against teachers and education department officers,” said C4 chief executive officer Pushpan Murugiah.

“The problems faced by Malaysian mothers trying to obtain citizenship for their children born to foreign fathers would also have been an issue for the ombudsman,” he said.

Family Frontiers, a group that helped the Malaysian mothers, also supports an independent and effective ombudsman’s institution.

“It is a key component of good governance and democratic accountability,” it said.

An ombudsman’s role, according to Pushpan, is to pinpoint structural flaws and implement improvements to completely prevent complaints in the future.

“In a nutshell, the ombudsman gets down to the root causes of maladministration and works with the civil service to fix them,” he said.

For example, in cases where people are denied entry to government offices due to their dressing, the ombudsman would be able to probe whether there were insufficient guidelines or if officers were inadequately trained.

“The ombudsman would make recommendations to improve policies, regulations, rules and standard operating procedures to prevent similar situations from happening again.”