Four-fifths of pending cases flagged by the Ombudsman are stuck at his own office, the Principal Permanent Secretary complained on Wednesday.
Mario Cutajar was addressing the media ahead of submitting a document about action taken over public service issues, raised by the Ombudsman's 2019 report, to the Speaker of the House and the President of Malta.
According to data provided by Cutajar, the Ombudsman's Office has yet to confirm whether the action taken by the Public Service over 119 complaints is adequate.
These make up 80% of the current 148 pending cases.
The remaining 29 cases are still being tackled by the various ministries.
In all, a total of 26 have been pending for more than 18 months either at the Ombudsman's office or with ministries.
Another 20 have been waiting for a solution between 12 and 18 months.
Cutajar insisted that criticism about backlog of cases was unjust, as figures showed the accountability, efficiency and determination of the Public Service.
He added that he, however, wanted to avoid controversies, because the role of the Public Service and the Ombudsman's Office was to provide a service to the public and protect citizens from injustice.
Referring to cases flagged in 2019, Cutajar said 253 out of 381 complaints have been closed.
A total of 40 out of these 253 were resolved after the Ombudsman's recommendations were implemented.
Nearly all - 98% - were addressed or deemed unjustified.
Cutajar said this was the third consecutive year that Public Service was publishing its reply to the Ombudsman's annual report.
The Public Service's action document covers half of the cases flagged by the Ombudsman in his report, Cutajar said, adding that the rest of the issues were not directly linked to public service provision and had been debated in parliament.
The Ombudsman's report had given a clean bill of health to the public administration because the 381 cases that it had investigated were 0.003% of the 13 million interactions through thousands of public services.
Cutajar meanwhile called on the Ombudsman to follow in the footsteps of his European counterparts and launch the office's own Standard Operation Procedures that would ensure people seek the Ombudsman's action as a last resort.
He insisted that the office of the Ombudsman was a necessary institution which he himself had resorted to.
However, some people in Malta were treating the Office of the Ombudsman as a customer care service and therefore doubling work that was already being carried out by the Public Service.