Kudos to Judiciary on case backlog reduction

On Friday, Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo in his State-of-the-Judiciary report, indicated that in the previous financial year, there was a small reduction in the case backlog, which has always been the biggest challenge in the Judiciary.

While presenting to the public the performance report for 2023/2024, the administrative head of the Judiciary revealed that there was a reduction of the case backlog by 372 cases (an equivalent of 0.87 percent).

The report indicated that during the financial year, courts completed 239,431 cases out of the total caseload of 401,269. The caseload comprised 143,205 cases brought forward from FY 2022/2023 and 258,064 freshly registered cases in FY 2023/2024. Courts closed with a pending caseload of 161,838 cases, of which 42,588, were backlogged, accounting for 26.32 percent.

Kudos to the Judiciary for reducing the case backlog that has always been a thorn in its flesh and also dented its image. They say a journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step. 

We believe that with this small reduction, you should not lose focus; instead, it should motivate you to double your efforts and reduce the case backlog even more.

Everyone who knocks on the doors of the Judiciary is usually seeking justice, and justice promptly, not justice that will be delivered at least four years later.

The judicial officers' biggest excuse has been handling too many files and the fact that they can only do so much.

True, much as we are tasking the Judiciary to tackle the case backlog monster, the government should also play its part and recruit more judicial officers because humanely speaking if you have a few judicial officers (655 in number), they can only do so much to resolve the complaints brought by a population of more than 45 million Ugandans.

We also implore the Judiciary to tighten their inspectorate department to ensure that all judicial officers work from Monday to Friday and from morning up to 5pm.

This is because we know that some judicial officers, especially those who work upcountry, work for only three days a week. These officers drive back to Kampala on Fridays to spend a weekend with their families. 

They then return to the duty stations on Monday, hence resuming their judicial duties from Tuesday to Thursday. Surely, there is no way we can tackle this backlog monster with such a sluggish way of handling cases.

For now, we celebrate the baby steps towards reducing case backlog. Kudos to the Judiciary, but you can do even better.