By Mustapha Sesay
The civil society group Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) has called on government to increase its budgetary allocation to the country’s judiciary.
The organization believes that poor funding allocation to the judiciary is a key factor undermining its effectiveness.
CARL recently launched a report titled “Harrowing Trials: Time to Bring Closure on Prolonged Trials for Accused Persons in Sierra Leone’s Judiciary System”.
Launching the report on Thursday last week at his Freetown office, the Executive Director of CARL, Ibrahim Tommy, stated that funding was a perennial problem that the justice system was grappling with.
“In fact, a cursory look at state funding to other arms and departments of government shows that the judiciary is being clearly neglected,” the report states.
“For example, in 2014 budget, while only $800,000 was allocated to the entire judiciary, $1,966.938 was allocated to the Secretary to the President; $142.061 was allocated to the political affairs ministry; $617,346 was allocated to the Chief of Staff; $928,857 was allocated to the Vice President. Meanwhile, the Local Courts Act 2011 brought about 292 local courts across the country under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary.”
To the civil society organization, it was clear that that additional responsibility had not seen a corresponding, significant increase in the budget of the judiciary.
Over the past few years, there has been a moderate rise in budgetary allocation to the judiciary, but the overall development budgetary allocation to the judiciary for the financial year 2013 stood below 1% of the total national budget of that year.
“Where the judiciary receives less than one per cent of the total national budget, it raises a legitimate concern that this might create an impediment to access justice,” CARL said on its website.
At the launch of the report, Tommy said there were a large numbers of cases in courts that were long overdue for verdict. Citing the Kabbah Kalu vs Sierra Leone Commercial Bank case as being in court since 2013, he said poor budgetary allocation was a major factor responsible for the “huge backlog of cases” in courts.
“The courts are overwhelmed with many cases. The number of civil and criminal cases far exceeds the resources and personnel available within the justice system to manage cases in a timely manner,” the report said.
The report also states that there were many remanded inmates and that had resulted in overcrowding at the Correctional Services Centres, especially in Freetown.
“To help address some of these would require massive investment in the judiciary so that the institution can attract more lawyers to the bench, as well as increase the number of courtrooms,” the report further states.
There was no one at the Ministry of Finance to react from the side of the government, as the Director of Budget, who Politico was told was the only authority to comment, was out of the country.
(C) Politico 28/07/15
