Until recently, only the High court and upper-level officers were required to wear a garb to demonstrate their judicial authority. Judiciary permanent secretary Pius Bigirimana says plans are finalised to ensure that all workers, including support staff at courts, have distinctive wear to enable the public to identify them by their distinctive duties.
This is in addition to the introduction of toll-free telephone lines for the public to report any suspicious and negative behaviour by the officials. These interventions, according to Bigirimana, waill go a long way to avoid confusion of the public especially clients seeking services.
Bigirimana revealed this as he was presenting the performance report of the sector at the Manifesto Week 2024 in Kampala. Corruption has been one of the dents in the judicial system and the justice, law and order sector has always been ranked among the most corruption-hit sectors. This has threatened the public confidence in the performance of the judiciary.
Bigirimana says the other interventions to boost the performance and effectiveness of the judicial officers include enhanced facilitation like the provision of official vehicles for all judges and registrars. He says they have now embarked on the allocation of vehicles to magistrates, servers and non-judicial staff, which will make case processing faster effective.
He, however, says the government’s increase in the budgetary allocation to the sector has improved service delivery. Bigirimana also called on the government through the ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to cover all the staff with the approved salary enhancements.
Currently, almost all judicial staff have had their enhancements implemented, and Bigirimana says this has encouraged better performance, but adds that there is a need to also increase the salaries of staff who support the judges. During the current term of the NRM leadership, the judiciary has also implemented digital processing of courts which has improved speed and efficiency.
The electronic court case management information system is a fully-featured system that automates and tracks all aspects of a case life cycle, including attending seasons online. Another achievement has been the completion of court premises around the country with others under implementation, a program that is expected to save the judiciary at least Shs 9.973 billion per year in rent.
These include the Court of Appeal and Supreme court buildings, which Bigirimana says have been attracting benchmarking delegations from other African countries because “they are the best on the continent”.
On the long-standing issue of case backlog, Bigirimana says they have been reducing the level over the three years and now the backlog accounts for just 25 per cent and is dropping further.
“At the end of 2021 courts on average completed cases faster within seven months. The backlog of the judiciary stood at 32 per cent which was 161,054. Cases in court 51,759 cases were backlog. A case is considered a backlog if it has more years in the court system before it is resolved. Currently, courts are on average completing cases faster within 6 months – which I think is very good progress. Over the past 3 years, there has been a gradual decrease in the case backlog from 2021, the backlog was 30.11%. From 2022 to 2023, backlog reduced to 27. 2023/24 it reduced to 26. At the end of September 2024, the case backlog stands at 25 and we’re going to push it below even 20,” said Bigirimana.
When cases pile up in court and remain unresolved for long, the situation not only affects the delivery of justice but has other negative effects. These include tying up capital in court and stifling economic activities, or even making inactive properties like land when there is a dispute, according to Bigirimana.
“Cases must get out of court. There is a lot of implications for these cases staying in court. In Commercial court cases which are related to banking, related to construction, related to insurance, related to trade – all these are cases if they were resolved the money would be in the economy and actually we’d have a large tax base. So these cases must be addressed…Cases related to land, and the livelihood of the people are being affected because of cases in court, investments are being affected because people cannot invest on disputed land…there are economic implications,” added Bigirimana.
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