Jinja court chokes on 1000 cases

The Jinja high court is chocking on a case backlog of 1,000 pending cases.

This was revealed by the resident Judge Eva Luswata during the opening of the hearing of the first criminal session by the Court of Appeal in Jinja presided over by deputy Chief justice.

In his remarks, the deputy Chief Justice Owiny Dollo pledged to embark on opening up permanent Courts of Appeal at regional level in a bid to reduce on the case backlog country wide.

Justice Luswata said she was  overwhelmed by the case backlog since at the moment she is handling 539 cases alone.

During this ceremony the issue of case backlog in courts turned into a subject matter which prompted one of the legal brains Andrew Ssebugwawo to threaten that he is nursing plans of lodging a constitutional petition challenging the appointment of judges to do non-judicial work.

"The president has continued to appoint Judges to do other tasks like Justice Byabakama was appointed the Chairman Electoral Commission, Justice Irene Mulyagonja appointed to head the Inspectorate of Government, Justice

Catherine Bamugemereire appointed to head the Land Probe yet the judiciary has inadequate judicial officers leading to case backlog.  I am considering filing a constitutional petition to challenge this," he said.

Justice Remmy Kasule who said it is very okay for judicial officers to be appointed to serve in other capacities since some times those offices require experienced officials with vast knowledge of the law.

The deputy chief justice, Owinyi Dollo concurred that inadequate judicial officers has affected the judiciary though he pledged to work on it and also open up permanent Courts of Appeal at regional level.

"It is true that we are short of judges in most courts for example we have only 50 judges of the High Court yet we need 80 Judges and we are only 8 Justices of Court of Appeal instead of 15" he said.