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Herald Reporter
THE Supreme Court has significantly reduced the backlog of cases after the Judicial Services Commission restructured all superior courts such that litigants can no longer use the appeal process to delay justice, an official has said. Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court Mr Walter Chikwanha yesterday said the Supreme Court now hears cases everyday compared to the three days per week previously, while the Constitutional Court sits every Wednesday.
Mr Chikwanha said this in a statement in response to enquiries by the media regarding some changes that occurred at the court recently, one of which was the relocation of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court to Mashonganyika Building from Supreme Court building adjacent to Parliament.
“At the beginning of the year, we had cases going as way back as 2006. “Now most of the appeals that we are setting down were filed with the Supreme Court in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
“It is our wish to ensure that appeals are not used as a time buying tactic by litigants who would have lost in the lower courts, but are a recourse to the superior court of justice.
There were 233 pending cases in the Supreme Court at the beginning of the year with a total of 248 appeals being filed during the year.
“To date, there are 119 pending matters, meaning that the backlog has been reduced by 114 cases, which is a reduction rate of 49 percent,” he said. “At this rate, the backlog will be completely wiped out in early 2015.”
The increase in the number of of judges of appeal from five to nine has enabled Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku to allocate work to them in such a way that courts now sit every day. At the High Court, said Mr Chikwanha, a case tracking system had been installed that electronically tracks a case from date of filing to date of judgement. Litigants in the past came to court to enquire on the progress of their cases.
“Instead of the old system where our registry staff had to pull out the record of the matter to establish the progress of the matter, our new system, in the kiosk, allows litigants to electronically see for themselves where their case is and to make copies of whatever information they require,” he said.
“It is also meant to move case tracking onto the electronic age and make the retrieval of information faster and more accurate. We hope we have succeeded in meeting all these objectives and in offering a better service to the public.”
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