Deputy Chief Justice urges judicial officers to embrace alternative dispute resolution mechanisms

The Deputy Chief Justice, Richard Buteera, has encouraged judicial officers to embrace the usage of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms to promote reconciliation in communities.

Buteera made the remarks while meeting judicial officers under Luweero and Nakasongola Chief Magisterial areas in Luweero district.

Buteera led a delegation comprised of members of the case backlog monitoring C\committee who included Court of Appeal justice, Stephen Musota and Sarah Langa Siu (Chief Registrar) among others.

Buteera urged the judicial officers to be interested and get involved in the registry work.

"If the registry does not capture what you have done, then it is futile. What you do should be reflected in your returns and data entry,” he said.

He said with more concentration, issues of backlog would be history in Luweero.

Out of the 297 pending cases at Nakasongola Chief Magistrate’s Court, 46 are categorised as backlog.

In the Luweero magisterial area, there are 2,068 pending cases in seven courts and of these cases, 491 are classified as backlog. Civil cases have the highest backlog at 225 cases, Land at 193 and Criminal Matters at 73 cases.

The court has undertaken to fight case backlog among the interventions through adopting a session system of handling cases and continued sensitisation of litigants by both judicial officers and court staff.

During a guided tour of the library, registry desks and archives, it was observed that there was the need to improve file management and proper record keeping.

There was poor entry and registration of results in the case registers and in the manual register, it was discovered that some of the results of the cases are not detailed in the register.

To improve visibility and promote transparency, it was recommended that all registry desks be labelled according to their specialty.

Buteera recommended that court fees be displayed on the wall and or notice board for ease of reference.