The Ombudsman has opened an action before him to gather information about , the official of the Mérida employment office who served citizens without an appointment when he had free time in his schedule or once the attention to the summoned people had concluded.
In the letter sent to the agency dependent on the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy, the directed institution requests information about the circumstances that motivated the opening of the file, as well as data on the average waiting time to obtain an appointment at the Mérida employment office during the years 2025 and 2026. It also asks about the criteria that regulate in-person attention to citizens and the limitations or instructions that public employees must observe in the performance of this work.
This action is carried out after Juan Carlos denounced what was happening to him in the public employment agency, when a disciplinary procedure was launched against him for serving people who had not been able to obtain an appointment. According to Nieto told EL PAÍS, citizens went to the office to request certificates of essential benefits to access certain resources or social aid.
The worker stressed that these procedures were carried out only when he had already attended to the people who had an assigned appointment or when there were free spaces in the daily schedule. That is, the extraordinary attention would not have interfered with the ordinary service or caused delays in the planned agenda.
In his communication to SEPE, the Ombudsman recalls that in recent years he has received numerous complaints from citizens who reported difficulties in getting an appointment and being attended to in person.
The institution points out that this problem has been the subject of several recommendations addressed to the then Secretary of State for Employment and Social Economy, currently integrated into the Secretary of State for Labor. The objective of these recommendations was to promote measures that facilitate service to users and reduce obstacles to accessing public services.
According to the Ombudsman, the responses received from the Administration have attributed these incidents mainly to the lack of available personnel to meet the existing demand. The lack of personnel has been one of the recurring arguments used by the agency to justify the delays and difficulties registered in granting appointments.
A controversy that has also been addressed by some parliamentary parties, such as Unidas por Extremadura, which has registered a Pronunciation Proposal in the Assembly to urge the central Government to review the citizen service procedures in the SEPE.
Deputy Francisco Llera has regretted that there is an attempt to sanction a public employee for attending in person to people who had not made an appointment. “It seems unbelievable that for doing your job well they want to file charges against you,” he stated. In the opinion of the training, the episode shows the “serious deficiencies” that persist in the functioning of the public employment service. For this reason, the parliamentary initiative proposes the development of a shock plan that will reduce delays in management and improve short-term care.
Among the proposed measures is the consolidation of in-person care as a stable form of service, the guarantee that citizens can be served in offices close to their place of residence and the possibility of providing care without an appointment when this does not alter the normal functioning of the administrative units. The proposal also calls for a sufficient supply of civil servant positions to strengthen the structure of the organization.
Or from the Popular Party of Extremadura, its spokesperson, Luis Miguel Núñez, described the decision as “incomprehensible and deeply unfair” and denounced that an employee is being penalized for providing services to citizens who needed to carry out urgent procedures.
For the popular ones, the disciplinary procedure sends the wrong message to public workers and highlights the limitations of a system that, on numerous occasions, leaves users without alternatives when they cannot obtain an appointment.
