Justice Gloria Akuffo, Attorney General and Minister of Justice
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice Gloria Akuffo has bemoaned the poor state of regional offices under her Ministry.
“I have already alerted the President that our regional offices especially what we have seen up country are near collapse, we cannot afford this to happen.There cannot be democracy if we don’t have strong justice system and we are key role players in that sector”.
The Minister made the comment Tuesday during a familiarization visit to the Eastern Regional office of the department as part of a nationwide tour. Among the participants were staff of EOCO and Alternate Dispute Resolution.
She said her Ministry is facing a lot of challenges including inadequate staff, logistics, infrastructure and budgetary constraints.
“I am aware also of the serious challenges of office and residential accommodation, I know not only space but most are in deplorable state, lack office equipment, even the administrative wing is also a problem”.
She added that the Finance Ministry has given clearance to employ 50 more State Attorneys while her office has also requested the National Service Secretariat to post more lawyers to the Ministry to boost the staff strength.
“I became aware of inadequate staffing situation, we are required to operate with a minimum of 600 state Attorneys but we are dealing with just half of that number “.
She added: “Immediately when I assumed office, I put in a request and as you know the bureaucracy, I am however sure that ultimately even though not adequate, we have clearance to recruit 50 more Attorneys, we have received over 200 applications, we are planning to carry out interviews to recruit the 50”.
Meanwhile, the staff at the Eastern Regional office mentioned among other things inadequate stationary, break down of photocopy machines and lack of grants to run the office as some of the challenges facing them.
The Eastern Regional State Attorney Emily Addo Okyereh appealed to the Minister to post more staff to the region to help dispense justice in the region.
