Supreme Audit Office Examines the Performance of Voivodes and Officials

According to TOKFM, foreigners are complaining that the residence and work permits are taking longer and longer to be issued. Supreme Audit Office (NIK) decided to check whether voivodes and officials are ready to provide efficient service to foreigners and what losses the budget suffers due to the inaction of the voivodes or excessively lengthy proceedings concerning residence and work permits.

NIK has audited eight provincial offices and eight labour offices in Wrocław, Warsaw, Krakow, Gdańsk, Katowice, Poznań, Olsztyn and Lublin, as well as the Ministry of Interior and Administration, Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy and the Office for Foreigners.

The applicants, mostly Ukrainians, state that, instead of 3-4 months, their cases are considered for a year or even more. The record delay for the consideration of the application, which was heard by the court, was 522 days!

When examining a complaint, the court may award compensation to a foreigner; it can also impose a fine on the voivode. The Supreme Administrative Court in Wroclaw has already made over 100 decisions on complaints regarding the delays in processing applications for the residence permit by the voivode of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. In more than 40 cases the court awarded compensation for the affected parties.

The situation is similar in other voivodeships, although there are noticeably fewer similar cases there. For example 10 complaints were filed in the court in Gdansk and 11 in Krakow. Compensation was awarded in four of them: in three cases it was 2,136 zloty and in one – 1,000 zloty.

The results of the audit and recommendations of the Supreme Audit Office will most likely be published at the end of the second quarter of 2019.

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