23 Jan 2018

Judge President Justice Goemekgabo Tebogo-Maruping has said the case management and court annexed mediation training would assist the industrial court improve its turnaround times and reduce backlog on cases.

Speaking at the beginning of a week-long training of judicial officers of the industrial court on judicial case management and court annexed mediation on Monday, Justice Tebogo-Maruping said the system would offer labour justice promptly in an accessible manner.

He said the system was introduced in 2007 in Botswana as a way of achieving speedy court resolution of disputes.

He noted that the delay in the resolution of disputes undermined the court mandate.

Justice Tebogo-Maruping said last year the industrial court had a 6.4 per cent backlog of cases and 2 262 cases were disposed and only 1 778 were outstanding with only 115 behind schedule.

He however lamented that although 93.6 per cent cases were disposed, parliament and the public seemed to focus on the 6.4 per cent, which he felt was unfair. Nonetheless, the Judge President urged judges to acquire the case management system and provide effective and efficient labour justice in an accessible manner to achieve a robust and relevant law dispute resolution.

The training coordinator, Justice Annah Mathiba said the system would encourage the judges to speed up disposal of cases as in other cases and would help them to directly deal with cases instead of depending on other stakeholders to set the pace of the cases.

She said she was hopeful that at the beginning of the legal year in February, the Industrial Court would implement the system.

The theme of the training is, “Case Management and court annexed mediation as effective judicial tools for speedy dispute resolution”.

The objective of the training is to exchange knowledge and skills on fundamental concepts of case management and to expose the judges and registrars to court annexed mediation as a tool for effectively dealing with backlog.

The training is conducted in conjunction with the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and the International Law Institute. ENDS