Justice for All Programme to get permanent secretariat

The Judicial Service is expected to set up a permanent secretariat to effectively coordinate and manage cases under the “Justice for All” programme in 2016.

Mr Seth Terkper, Finance Minister, said judges would be appointed to each region to sit on remand prisoners? cases regularly.

He said this when he presented the 2016 Budget statement to Parliament on Friday on the theme: “Consolidating Progress towards a Brighter Medium Term.“

The Minister recalled that in 2015 the Service disposed of 98,635 cases against an annual target of 95,500 cases nationwide.

In 2016, the Service expects that a total of 101,448 cases would be tried, and judgments delivered.

Under the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the Finance Minister said 1,047 out of a targeted 4,321 cases were mediated and settled successfully.

“Ten new courts were connected to ADR and training for 26 mediators from selected circuit and district courts were conducted. In 2016, a total of 4,985 cases will be mediated and settled. It is anticipated that 20 new courts will be connected to ADR during the year,” he said.

To implement these programmes and activities, Mr Terkper said GH? 193,702,296.00 has been allocated.

Out of this, GH? 188,500,668.00 would be coming from Government while GH? 3,455,159.00 would be sourced from Internally Generated Fund and GH? 1,746,469.00 would be provided by Development Partners.

The Minister indicated that in 2016, court automation would be expanded to cover 96 courts out of a total of 346 courts.