09 Mar 2016

The introduction of Judicial Case Management at the Industrial Court as a way of pushing cases that are backlog is said to be progressing well and yielding results.

Speaking in Parliament, Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu said the most critical issue in the provision of quality justice is the speedy and timely delivery of justice.

He said as at December 2015, the total number of pending cases in all the courts was 7 983 and 85 per cent of the cases were in the Gaborone Division alone.

Mr Batshu also noted that of these cases, 4 159 cases were recorded as backlog, while 61.4 per cent of them were in the Gaborone Division, 19.4 per cent in Francistown Division and 4.04 per cent in Maun circuit court.

“As at December 2015, a total of 3 579 cases were completed. Of these, 2 868 cases were completed out of total number of backlog cases.  In the year 2015, backlog was therefore reduced by 68.9 per cent,” said the minister.

He also said this meant that on average, 319 backlog cases were completed every month from January to December 2015.

Meanwhile, the distribution of the backlog cases that are pending, as at December 2015 was 721 in Gaborone Division, 379 in Maun circuit court and 191 in the Selebi Phikwe circuit court.

The minister however, noted that the Judicial Case Management was most significant in the Francistown Division where backlog has been cleared and the court was presently hearing 2015 and 2016 cases.

On another issue, the minister told parliament that the review of the Rules of Court was underway and the project would be completed by August this year.

The rules will include procedures on alternative dispute resolution as a tool to expedite the rate of case disposal.

However, Minister Batshu said though the Court had these achievements, it remained critical that the Court’s resources were guaranteed to prevent relapse.

He said notable was the fact that Labour Courts were by their nature inquisitorial, and as a Court of law and equity, there was need to afford litigants due consideration as opposed to strict application of procedures.

“Hence, if the Court is not adequately resourced, both in human and financial resources, a possibility of relapse and subsequent accumulation of backlog may be inevitable. It is in that regard that I will continue to plead for budgetary increase for the Industrial Court going forward,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Labour and Home Affairs has for the recurrent budget of the Industrial Court, submitted before parliament for consideration and approval the amount of P42 506 110, while for the development budget, the submission is P5 985 000.

Therefore, Parliament has approved the Industrial Court’s Recurrent and Development Budget proposals for the financial year 2016/17. Ends