05 Jun 2016

Acting Registrar of the Industrial Court, Ms Segomotso Mothotho says they will continue to explore ways which will assist in eradicating case backlog in the two existing courts.

Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recently, Ms Mothotho explained that the backlog was due to the fact that only two permanent courts existed in Gaborone and Francistown.

At the moment, she added, plans were underway to establish another permanent Industrial Court in Maun, a move she said would significantly address the backlog problem.

She also told the committee that as a way to further address the problem, the Industrial Court had since increased its circuit courts from three to seven.

Though the move was helpful, she said, sittings were not as many as the court would have wished because of financial implications associated with such.

Nonetheless, Ms Mothotho said the turnaround period for case disposal rate had improved from five to three years of registration of an industrial case.

Such improvement, she said, was because of introduction of Judicial Case Management (JCM), adding she was therefore optimistic that with the introduction of the reviewed Rules of Court sometime this year, the situation would improve for the better.   

The Industrial Court would also introduce alternative dispute resolution mechanisms following a benchmarking exercise with Zambia, with added modifications to suit local consumers.

The project is funded by UNDP. In addition, the court had partnered with Arizona School of Law in implementing the project.

Meanwhile, she explained that the Industrial Court had decided that any case finished within 12 months was not considered among those in the backlog because backlog cases were those not addressed from 24 months onwards.

The committee also heard that the court has not designed its own balance score card to monitor its performance and evaluation. Member of Parliament for Gaborone Bonnington South, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe had wanted to know if the court had its own balance scorecard to monitor performance and evaluation.

Ms Mothotho further told the committee that  Industrial Court Judges were governed by Rules of Court and therefore would not do as they pleased. ENDS