Israelis filed 30,366 complaints to the Public Complaints Commission in 2025, a 41% increase from the previous year, with the sharpest rise linked to failures in the Labor Ministry unit responsible for daycare and after-school subsidy approvals, according to a State Comptroller report published on Tuesday.
Of the complaints in which the commission reached a decision, 56% were found justified – the highest rate since its establishment. Another 7,429 complaints were resolved without a formal decision.
The report points to where Israelis most often encountered state failure in 2025: long waits, unanswered phones, unclear decisions, outdated systems, and delays that left families paying full prices while waiting for the state to determine whether they were entitled to assistance.
The Labor Ministry received the highest number of complaints, with 7,082 filed against it. Most dealt with subsidies for daycare centers and family daycare frameworks, and 91% of complaints against the ministry were found justified.
It was followed by the Transportation Ministry, with 2,298 complaints; the National Insurance Institute, with 1,581; the Tax Authority, with 1,119; the Population and Immigration Authority, with 994; the Education Ministry, with 940; Israel Police, with 932; the Health Ministry, with 687; Jerusalem Municipality, with 609; and the Justice Ministry, with 550.
Across all complaints, 29% dealt with public service, 19% with daycare and family daycare subsidies, and seven percent with education and higher education.
Around one-fifth of complaints against bodies under the commission’s authority concerned local government.
The number of untreated requests points to a substantial failure
The war also continued to affect the complaint map.
The report said the rise in complaints against the Tax Authority was mainly linked to people harmed by enemy fire, while wartime-related cases also contributed to the rise in complaints against the National Insurance Institute.
In 2025, complainants and others affected by the commission’s decisions received roughly NIS 12 million.
The most significant section of the report focused on the Labor Ministry’s Senior Division for Encouraging Parental Employment, which handles subsidy levels for supervised daycare centers, family daycare centers, and after-school frameworks.
In 2025, the commission received 6,931 complaints against the division, compared with 824 in 2024 and 771 in 2023 – an unprecedented 740% increase from the previous year, according to the report.
Of the complaints examined, 91.1% were found justified, far above the overall justified-complaint rate.
The failures included an unavailable or closed call center, major delays in setting subsidy levels, faulty handling of reservists’ applications, delays affecting residents of Gaza border communities, repeated mistakes in setting subsidy levels for siblings, incorrect implementation of ministry rules, online service failures, lack of reasoning in decisions, and poor treatment by call-center representatives.
The subsidy criteria for the 2024-2025 school year were published only in November 2024, roughly four months after the school year began. The delay left many parents not knowing what subsidy level they would receive, while they were required to pay full tuition in the meantime.
Most complaints against the division dealt with subsidy levels – 5,676 of which 88.8% were found justified. Complaints regarding the call center’s lack of availability were found justified at a rate of 100%, and complaints about online services at a rate of 95.1%.
The Labor Ministry told the commission it faced several barriers, including the late publication of subsidy criteria, the need to await High Court rulings, outdated computer systems, and an unusual concentration of applications submitted in a short period.
It said it had taken steps to improve the system, including receiving salary data directly from the National Insurance Institute, updating subsidy amounts after more than a decade, adding call-center staff, and using a voice bot to reduce calls.
But the comptroller found that the problems persisted.
In February 2025, State Comptroller and Ombudsman Matanyahu Englman wrote to Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur and asked him to ensure that the ministry met the standards set in its contract with the call-center operator, reopened the call center, gave parents substantive answers, and set subsidy levels without delay.
After visiting the Beersheba call center in May 2025, Englman found that it was receiving around 9,000 calls a day and that wait times ranged from 54 minutes to two hours.
“The number of untreated requests and the volume of complaints received by the Public Complaints Commission and by the Labor Ministry point to a substantial failure in the call center’s ability to fulfill its purpose and provide proper service to Israeli parents,” Englman wrote to the labor minister.
The report also highlighted failures affecting groups already under wartime strain. The commission received 211 complaints from reservists regarding poor handling of requests for subsidy levels and registration of their children in supervised frameworks.
Some said the delays and failure to give registration priority caused financial distress on top of the personal burden created by reserve service. Following the commission’s intervention, the report said, those complaints were handled.
The commission also received 106 complaints from residents of Gaza border communities regarding registration, subsidy levels, and poor call-center service.
Nearly 80% were found justified, including complaints over delays in implementing a government decision granting residents of Gaza border communities a favorable subsidy level without income testing, subject to other conditions.
Shows a broad failure in the state’s ability to provide basic, timely service
The Labor Ministry said the benefit was not automatic and that its computer systems could not identify applications by residential address before processing began.
The commission found that the delay undermined the purpose of the government decision, which was meant to strengthen civilian resilience in communities near the border, and called on the ministry to create a mechanism to identify and prioritize those applications.
The comptroller called on the Labor and Finance Ministries to urgently improve the response given to parents, draw lessons before the next school year, and correct the flaws raised by the complaints.
The recommendations included improving call-center availability, shortening wait times, ensuring professional and consistent answers, fixing outdated computer systems, reducing repeated document demands, publishing clear guidance, providing reasons for decisions, and making sure parents can challenge decisions meaningfully.
The Labor Ministry said it received an additional NIS 4m. in 2025 to add call-center representatives and open a direct WhatsApp channel. It also said it hired an outside company to review subsidy procedures, was developing a new computer system, and was examining AI tools to shorten case-handling times and improve service.
Still, the report said that despite the steps taken, the commission continued to receive hundreds of complaints about call center unavailability and delays in setting subsidy levels, including 241 complaints in the last quarter of 2025 alone.
For the comptroller, the issue is not only due to one ministry’s backlog.
The complaints show a broader failure in the state’s ability to provide basic, timely service to citizens – particularly parents, reservists, and residents of communities already carrying the burden of war.