The Public reception office in Kirovograd is overcrowded

More than 180 citizens visited the Public reception office of the Center for human rights protection of the association “Public initiatives” (Kirovograd). The reception office works since April 2003 owing to the aid of the National Endowment for Democracy of the USA Embassy. Nikolay Bezlatny, the legal consultant, receives more than 50 clients instead of the planned 20 per month. The workers of the reception office even had to introduce the preliminary registration by phone because of too great flow of people, who wanted to get the legal aid gratis.

The monitoring of the appeals show that most of clients (57.5%) turn to the reception office in the connection with the violations of their humanitarian rights: labor, social, etc. The overwhelming majority of the visitors (87.75%) are poor citizens, who cannot afford to pay for juridical services. They especially need the opportunity to obtain free legal consultations and aid. A considerable part of them (77.5%) have already tried to protect their rights in other instances, but only 20% got the aid. The appeals to public organizations and militia turned out to be the most efficient. The proportion of positive results in these cases was 57.1% and 42.8% correspondingly. The clients of the public reception office achieved no results, when they turned to the organs of local self-rule, prosecutor’s offices and state executive service.

Our informant