On his part, the Ugandan Judiciary’s permanent Secretary Dr Pius Bigirimana said that hosting the Executive Committee of the Southern African Judicial Administrators Association at the Judiciary will help in sharing and learning about where other states have been able to excel.
The top administrators of Southern and Eastern Africa
Judiciaries have discussed ways on how to continue learning from different countries
that are doing better in justice dispensation in order to improve the efficiency
of all the judiciaries within the regions.
The Executive leaders under their umbrella body, Southern and Eastern Judicial Administrators
Association- SEAJAA which is a subordinate Association under the Chief
Justices Forum of Southern and Eastern Africa held meeting at the Judiciary Headquarters in Kampala
on Friday.
The administrators are currently preparing for the East and
Southern Africa Chief Justices summit to be held in September 2024 in
Kampala.
Their association is mainly comprised of the Accounting officers, Permanent
Secretaries, Chief Registrars and Chief Court Administrators of the member
countries.
According to SEAJAA- Chairperson Professor Elisante Ole Gabriel, the association
seeks to exchange best practices and foster co-operation among members on
matters of common concern, promote the rule of law, democracy and the
independence of the Judiciary and its administration and to assist in
strengthening institutions tasked with judicial administration in member
countries.
He said the association was established in 2017 and currently has 13 member countries,
although they are rallying other members to join for purposes of judicial cooperation
and addressing pertinent issues of rule of law and the need to promote a common
judicial interest.
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SEAJAA members include Uganda, Eswatini, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi
and Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Zambia, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe.
Professor Elisante who is also the
Chief Court Administrator of Tanzania’s Judiciary also urged the media to
communicate Judicial matters ethically and professionally saying that justice
dispensation is delicate and when not handled properly, it can affect the
public and cause confusion in communities.
He commended the Judiciary of Uganda for automation and modernization of the
courts encouraging them to learn from Tanzania which he said is now at 99
percent in terms of applying ICT in the court system and leading in Africa.
"We are now paying an advanced electronic case management system and we
are moving to translation and transcription software. Therefore, Uganda will
not struggle for bench making on this," said Elisante.
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Professor Elisante’s remarks come at the time when the Ugandan Judiciary is
in the process of putting a Judgement writing tool within the court's so as to
expedite hearing of the cases and also to reduce on the workload by the judicial
officers, hence reduction on case backlog as well.
The Ugandan Judiciary has 43000 backlog
cases according to recent reports from the Chief Justice and more than 85
trillion Uganda shillings were locked up in the Commercial Court alone as per
last year’s mini report.
On his part, the Ugandan Judiciary’s permanent Secretary Dr.
Pius Bigirimana said that hosting the Executive Committee of the Southern
African Judicial Administrators Association at the Judiciary will help in sharing
and learning about where other states have been able to excel.
Bigirimana emphasized the need for the delivery of timely
justice noting that the Judiciary of Uganda is still struggling with the
problem of case backlog with some cases affecting the economy especially the
Commercial Courts with trillions of shillings stuck there due to the failure to
have such cases disposed of in a timely manner.
He said other cases that continue to stagnant in the Court
system are related to Land matters,construction,banking and insurance which he
said have big economic
implications.
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Luganda btye
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Tanzania is doing well in electronic case management and
with this visit, Bigirimana hopes to share the experiences with Tanzania on how
it has been successful in that filed and fighting case backlog.
At the closure of the day’s meeting was the launch of the
association website where member states will easily share ideas on how to
dispense justice to litigants and to improve service delivery.
Apart from Bigirimana and Elisante, the Executive meeting
was attended by Executive Director of Judiciary of Namibia Benhardt Kukuri,
Deputy Registrar of High Court of Namibia Susan Hinda, Registrar of the Supreme
Court, Court of Appeal and High Court of Malawi Kondwani Banda. Others are: David Mbeha from the Judiciary of Namibia, judiciary
of Malawi Accountant, Samuel Manyowa
and Beaulah Kgakgamatso Mguni the Chief Registrar of Botswana Judiciary.
