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Ombudsman Institution

mentioned here in order to maintain this successful management in the post-
virus era, to be well-prepared for such pandemics or global humanitarian crises
that may occur in the future and to gain experience by learning the necessary
lessons from this process.

Based on the complaints received by the Ombudsman Institution, the
problems or deficiencies encountered during the response process can be listed
in seven categories.

First, regarding the distribution of the masks, pharmacies put an exorbitant
price on the mask, one mask was sold for 5 TRY. The state intervened in
immediately and banned the sale of masks and adopted the method of
distributing masks to citizens free of charge through pharmacies. Citizens
made an application for masks via PTT (the National Post and Telegraph
Directorate of Türkiye) and e-Government and the masks were distributed
with reference to the code that the applicants received. However, certain
citizens did not receive the code timely or not received a code at all. Pharmacies
had the impression that the mechanism for this distribution was improper,
and that there should be more personnel assigned for this task, and that the
duty of distribution was a burden on them. Since certain people experienced
problems with the code and the number of masks supplied to pharmacies on a
daily basis was insufficient and pharmacies were reluctant about this process,
it was observed that citizens had a problem in finding a mask for a while. The
government identified this situation and allowed pharmacies to sell masks;
however, it decided to determine a reasonable price for it.

The proper method was found eventually but it took some time to
figure out the problem. It has been observed that pharmacies and Turkish
Pharmacists’ Association were not able to operate in full compliance with the
administration that manages the response.

The second problem is about the distance education system of the Ministry
of National Education, which gave students the chance to attend online
classes through EBA (Education Information Network). The students have
attended these online classes with their own teachers and classmates at the
time allocated to them. It was observed that certain students could not attend
these classes because they could not connect to the live broadcast. Although

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