Judiciary in for facelift as reforms gather pace

Major reforms have been proposed for the Judiciary to address the backlog of cases, eliminate corruption and improve on service delivery to the public.

The recommendations are contained in a report of the Task Force on Judicial Reforms that was presented to the Chief Justice and the Minister for Justice.

The Judiciary has been dogged by a huge backlog of cases.

A report done by Ms Beneah Mutsotso on behalf of The Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA Kenya) reveals that a total of 998,263 cases are pending in courts countrywide with 209,668 before the High Court and 788,595 before Magistrates Courts by December 2009.

About 55 per cent (416,134) of those cases relate to traffic offences with 190,969 being civil, 122,159 are criminal and 10,189 relate to land issues.

To address this, the report recommends the filling of all vacant positions of Judges and Magistrates, an evaluation of human resource needs to be undertaken so as to determine the adequate staffing levels and an amendment to the Judicature Act to increase to at least 30 and 120 the number of Court of Appeal Judges and High Court Judges respectively.

However, the Registrar of the High Court Ms Lydia Achode said that a total of 50 new magistrates had been hired and were to start work this month in an effort to address the staffing shortfall.

Case monitoring and outputs of individual Judges will be published and Commissioners will be hired to deal with cases older than five years as a temporary measure.

Small Claims Courts and other courts will be established to deal with petty criminal cases.

To reduce the backlog of traffic cases a National Road Safety Authority has been proposed to impose instant fines on traffic offenders who plead guilty, review national drivers licenses and logbooks and help in information sharing between Police and the Registrar of Motor Vehicles.

Urgent cases

Courts will also be empowered to dismiss criminal appeals if they have not been prosecuted within 1 year after their filing and 24 hour courts will be established to deal with urgent cases.

The report recommends that an ICT policy and Master Plan be established.

Ms Achode, a Joint Secretary of the Task Force said that the Chief Justice had already put together a committee of ICT to spearhead computerisation of the Judiciary.

“The Ministry of Information Communication through the ICT Board has helped us kick-off digitisation of records with the Central Registry here at Milimani. This will then be rolled to other High Courts” she said.