Judiciary moves to clear case backlog

In a bid to clear case backlog, the Judiciary has assigned six judges at the High Court’s Blantyre District Registry to concentrate on writing outstanding judgements over a three-month period.

The development has left only four judges on the ground to attend to fresh matters coming to court at the Blantyre Registry of the High Court.

Judge-In-Charge at the High Court (Blantyre Registry), Dunstain Mwaungulu, confirmed the arrangement when exclusively approached by The Nation on Wednesday.

He said the case backlog was too huge and “even an embarrassment” to disclose the figure to the public.

Mwaungulu said the decision to clear the backlog was already there during the time of recently retired chief justice Lovemore Munlo.

He also commended the policy statement the newly appointed Chief Justice Anastasia Msosa has made to ensure progress within three months on clearing of the backlog, emphasising it is a brilliant statement.

Mwaungulu said when a memorandum was raised by Munlo to clear the backlog, he (Mwaungulu) immediately called all the High Court judges at Blantyre Registry for a discussion on how best that could be done.

He said the arrangement was made about a month ago and according to reports reaching his office, there is good progress.

He said four judges attending to fresh matters at the Blantyre Registry include himself, who was abroad working at a tribunal and three other newly appointed judges.

The judge-in-charge said they also consulted the Malawi Law Society (MLS) and the lawyers’ body accepted the arrangement.

He said the judges handling fresh matters, both criminal and civil, are making a good progress, attending to 50 to 60 matters in a week.

Justin Dzonzi, executive director of Justice Link, said in an interview on Wednesday the decision was good though made as a way of solving a situation that went bad.

He said the Judiciary must avoid a repeat of a situation where it may have a judge sitting on a judgement for over 10 years.

He said an ideal situation is to have minimum judgements a judge must come up with in a year, arguing the problem is that judges do not work under any specific time frame and they do not report to anyone.