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Namibia: Justice Lacks Magistrates
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
28 April 2008
Posted to the web 28 April 2008
Christof Maletsky
Windhoek
The Ministry of Justice has started addressing the serious backlog of cases it had through expediting some cases, increasing the salaries of judges and legal officers and appointing more magistrates.
Justice Deputy Minister Utoni Nujoma said during the debate on the Ministry's budget on Thursday that they were short 68 magistrates but managed to recruit 12 on contract basis.
He said Prosecutor General Martha Imalwa helped to reduce the backlog of cases by disposing of some which had been on the roll for a long time and were not progressing. He gave several reasons for the backlog. Among those was a lack of training for Police officers, legal practitioners who tend to double book their cases and witnesses who agree to testify but change their minds at the last minute. Nujoma said he expected the caseload to remain high because of continued non-payment of child maintenance by men.
"We must instil values in the communities. We must tell our children that they must pay maintenance if they impregnate children of other people," he said. Nujoma also said the Ministry had introduced a new system at the Windhoek Magistrate's Court to computerise cases in a bid to reduce the backlog.
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He said that would make it harder for criminals to steal dockets. The system will be introduced in the rest of the country at a later stage.
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