Officials of the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) on the 10th of April 2026, officials paid a working visit to the Office of the Public Independent Conciliator. The visit was aimed at gaining insights on the role of the Office of the Public Independent Conciliator in the South-West Region, the challenges faced and how the institution relate with the population.
The Public Independent Conciliator gave a comprehensive and explicit explanation about her office, beginning form its creation (as a special status), its missions, challenges and activities carried out by the office in line with its missions. While explaining the background of the office she emphasized that OPIC serves as a watchdog to the Regional Assembly and local councils to ensure that they carry out their functions effectively in accordance with the law as they have been given some powers to accompany their functions and carry out developmental projects for the benefit of the population. For a better understanding of the creation and missions of OPIC she handed to them brochures and the legal framework to get more insights about the office.
Regarding the activities carried out by her institution, the PIC stated that her office engages in field activities to different municipalities within the Region to evaluate the state of relations between the councils and their population, the distribution of questionnaires to the population to collect data with regard to the activities of the Regional Assembly, Council services and to assess the population’s knowledge on the missions of OPIC. Also, the institution has been able to organised town hall meetings in almost all the council areas in the Region which aims at bringing together the council administration and the population and addresses the preoccupations of citizens. All these including radio sensitization programs to educate the population about the services of the council and her office, has contributed greatly to achieving the missions of OPIC and also serve as parameters through which information for the annual report is collected.
However, she stated that, just like any other institution, OPIC has its own challenges such as inaccessibility and insecurity in some areas of the Region but notwithstanding, the institution has always devised a way to overcome these challenges especially with the fact that the Region is currently expressing a relatively calm environment which guarantees security and ease mobility to different municipalities within the Region.
After the brief and explicit explanation about OPIC, the officials expressed gratitude to the PIC for such wonderful presentation and also for creating time to meet the despite her busy schedule.
