9,600 people are waiting for UDI to process their applications for family reunification.The Ombudsman believes that the procedures for this are taking too much time and says that this is unacceptable.
– The amount of time taken in processing the applications is very worrying, and this has consequences for human life, the Ombudsman Aage Thor Falkanger says to the newspaper Dagbladet.
That UDI has cases that are 30 to 40 months old, and some are even older, is not acceptable according to the Ombudsman. This is one of the points made by the Ombudsman in a statement that addresses a doubling of the number of complaints from 2014 to last year. It should not take more than 13 months to process an application, the Ombudsman has previously stated.
– The situation has not improved much during 2015, and it does not seem likely that it will improve much in the near future, according to the statement.
Ombudsman points out that the amount of resources that are at their disposal is an important factor for UDI, and also points out that it is the Ministry of Justice which is responsible for ensuring the Agency has sufficient resources.
– UDI reply to our criticism by referring to limited resources and that they do not have enough people to process the applications. And so our conclusion is that you need to increase the resources that at the UDI’s disposal to resolve this in a satisfactory manner, says Falkanger.
UDI believes the situation has improved this year. The number of people that are waiting for their applications to be processed has dropped from 13,000 to 9,600.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
