A team composed of members from the NDC’s Good Governance Working Group visited the Central Organization for Control and Auditing’s (COCA) Taiz office on Sunday.

During a meeting with the local COCA office’s chairperson and staff, the NDC members discussed challenges facing the office as well as other items on the visiting team’s agenda.

Office officials stated that a number of laws serve to limit their supervisory role and functions. They pointed towards legislation which prevents authorities from questioning senior officials unless they have received permission to do so from the President of the Republic and the office of the Chief Prosecutor.

Officials said that one of the key legal deficiencies was that while Yemeni laws address different types of crimes, they fail to specify punishments for the various crimes.

They stated that COCA had submitted a paper to the NDC Secretariat General which highlighted such legislative deficiencies and included a proposal for the construction of an independent supervisory body controlled neither by the President of the Republic nor by Parliament.

Ibrahim Al-Kuhali, Director of the Taiz office’s Administrative Section, said the legislative deficiencies expose organization officials to danger.

“Let me explain… We submit cases of violations to the prosecution and the latter consistently fails to refer officials or their cases to courts,” said Al-Kuhali. “Then we become a target. We don’t have sufficient protection and the organization is not independent,” he said. 

The team also met with Director Deneral of the State Real Estate and Urban Planning Service, Marwan Al-Maqtari.

He said the service is facing complicated legal problems. Providing an example, Al-Maqtari pointed to current laws which stipulate that people can own only 30% of properties which lie on mountaintops, while the remaining 70% must be owned by the government.

“Mountaintops aren’t good places for investments,” he said.

He added that investors aren’t provided with licenses except when given permission from the service; if part of an investment project isn’t completed within a year, the license will be withdrawn without any available recourse to legal proceedings.