Inefficient case management is a major reason court cases take too long to be concluded, the Auditor General has said.
The performance report on implementation of the 'Dispensation of Justice Programme' by the Judiciary as at November 2021 said courts are still unable to expeditiously and equitably deliver justice.
The report said judicial records indicated that most litigants waited for an average of two to three months before obtaining the first mention dates.
“Interviews at the court stations, however, revealed that litigants sometimes had to wait for up to six months to get a date for the first hearing,” the report added.
The report also said delay in typing proceedings had led to delays in appeal cases.
“Review of pending files showed that several files had not been typed, with some dating as far back as 2012. Interviews with the registry staff revealed that appeal cases could not start without typed proceedings, furthering the need for continuous typing of proceedings,” Gathungu said.
The Judiciary developed the Judicial Transformation Framework 2012-2016 to fulfil its constitutional mandate of delivering justice and securing public confidence.
To achieve the transformation, the Judiciary rolled out the Dispensation of Justice Programme from the year 2013.
The audit revealed that the implementation of the programme has generally led to renovation and construction of courts, improvement of case management, increase in human resources and partial automation of court processes.
It nonetheless noted that the Integrated Case Management System, a major component of the Dispensation of Justice Programme, had not been implemented.
“The Judiciary had only implemented one component of the ICMS, the Case Tracking System (CTS). Further, as at September 2019, the CTS had only been launched in 41 out of the 139 courts stations in the country,” the report said.
The report further cited lack of proper record keeping at the registries as hindering the dispensation of justice.
“Physical verification of files in the sampled registries indicate that staff were not fully complying to the prescribed procedures that ensure effective record keeping,” Gathungu added.
"A random sample of 52 files from 12 court stations established that only 15 files were correctly paginated. In addition, the audit found only one station that kept tracer cards as recommended."
She said lack of secure file storage was repeatedly reported as a problem across the sampled stations.
The report further cited poor implementation of court infrastructure.
“There were delays at various stages of implementation of the infrastructure. The audit noted substantial delays for both renovations and new construction. More than half of the projects had extensions of three or more years from the original completion date,” Gathungu said.
The report said more than half of the 39 government-led projects had stalled during construction.
“Physical verification registered stalled projects in Eldoret, Nyeri, Makadara, Chuka, Port Victoria, and Garissa where there had been no progress in implementation for more than a year. All the projects were at an advanced stage of completion before contractors abandoned sites,” the report said.
The audit revealed that judicial staff hardly undergo any training based on interviews in sampled stations.
“The Judiciary had not conducted minimal training for staff for capacity building or increase of knowledge in relevant areas in order to improve service delivery. Moreover, there had been no training needs assessment for Judicial staff," the Auditor General's report said.
