Gaborone — The Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is experiencing a shortage of prosecutors because it no longer has the full service of the police.

The police are now leaving prosecution work to DPP as part of reforms to the administration of justice. This has meant that courts, especially at the lower levels, have been hit by a shortage of prosecutors.

This has caused a delay in cases. Police prosecutors are now finalising the cases they were handling as all new matters are taken up by DPP staff.

A spokesperson from the Attorney General's office, Abigail Hlabano said that the DPP is supposed to take over all prosecutions from the police by 2015.

"This means all police prosecutors have to be relieved of their prosecutorial duties so that they can concentrate their energy solely on their core business, as governed by the Police Act," she said.

She said that the DPP has a mammoth task of replacing more than 200 police prosecutors with legal professionals.

She added that while they are still recruiting, they are removing the police from prosecuting gradually and not en masse.

Hlabano said that the DPP is in the process of recruiting more personnel but the task is proving difficult because it is not easy to lure lawyers from private practice.

Hlabano said they hope that with the recent government decision to treat lawyers and other legal professionals as people with scarce skills, the DPP will get more personnel. "This will have a positive effect on clearing the backlog of cases before all our courts being drastically reduced.

It will be easy for the DPP to assign some prosecutors to the magistrates' court while others tackle High Court cases," she said.