Magistrates to have official attire

KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | All magistrates will soon have official attire as part of the Judiciary’s interventions to improve service delivery.

The introduction of a uniform, which has until now been known for High Court and upper-level officers, is not only aimed at introducing some uniformity, but the garb will also act as a symbol of authority.

Pius Bigirimana, the Permanent Secretary of the Judiciary 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 duties.

This is in addition to the introduction of toll-free telephone lines for the public to report any suspicious and negative behaviour by officials.

These interventions, according to him will go a long way to avoid confusion of the public especially clients seeking services.

The Permanent Secretary 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 severally 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.

The PS 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.

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 9.973 billion Shillings in rent.

These include the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court buildings, which the PS 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 percent and is dropping further.

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.

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