Brno, Oct 31 (CTK) – The Office of Czech Ombudsman Anna Sabatova has received 49 complaints from children this year, her assistant Barbora Kubikova told CTK, adding that the number for the full last year was 51 in the country with a population of 10.5 million.
Kubikova said offices’ wrongdoing was found in three cases.
The biggest number of applications for help are mainly filed by young people aged 13 to 19, while younger children are no exception.
Sabatova considers these cases priority ones.
Iva Hrazdilkova, spokeswoman for the office, said children seek advice mainly in their relations to their family and the consequences of the disintegration of the family, which is also true of stays in facilities for children.
“A number of children ask for advice in connection with financial problems debts and distraints, which often plague their parents. The children’s applications for help show that children, in spite of their low age, realise the seriousness of the situation and try to help their parents with doing voluntary work,” Hrazdilkova said.
Children, whose family has disintegrated and who must undergo interviews and psychological examinations ask the ombudsman “whether this will ever end, whether they can do something, or how courts weigh their wishes,” Hrazdilkova said.
She said the Czech Republic does not have a children’s ombudsman despite recommendations by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.
