Industrial Court bankrupt � Batshu
Oarabile Mosikare | Thursday March 10, 2016 16:31
Presenting a statement for the recurrent and development budget proposal for the Industrial Court in Parliament, the minister said the biggest challenge in conducting circuit courts is the continued rise in expenditure.
“The effect of this was that there was a reduction in the number of cases registered in the circuit court sites with a total number of registered cases for 2015 at just 344.
“Despite these challenges, the court was however able to conclude cases for the years 2010 to 2013 in Kasane, Letlhakane, Ghanzi and Jwaneng. The Palapye circuit court was established in 2012, and has since cleared the backlog,” said Batshu.
Last year, the minister submitted that the court leveraged on Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) to extend the services of the court to areas where it is not able to reach.
He said immediate areas of leverage included court recording, portal administration, distribution of judgments and e-Gov. “Of the above listed, the court was able to acquire court recording equipment and this has greatly improved the security and the timely production of court records. The remaining initiatives could not be fully implemented due to logistical and financial challenges.
The objective was to optimise use of the court’s portal to ensure that clients in the whole of Botswana can access services through Internet.”
Batshu said the basic technology that the court needs is an electronic case management system. “This House was briefed in the previous years of the manual case management system. This state of affairs that has left the court, in archaic times. The lack of an automated system of case management highly hinders performance and subsequently compromises the quality of justice. It affects the pace of affording cases due attention within reasonable time.”
He continued: “As it were, this is one cardinal point that threatens to undermine good industrial relations in Botswana in the unfortunate and likely event where tripartite members and the public at large lose confidence and trust in the court and its systems.
Automation is therefore, a necessary tool to steer dispute resolution and assure responsiveness to cases in a timely and prompt manner.
“I must indicate here that, the court, as a measure to mitigate public perception, and for the ultimate objective to restore and maintain confidence in the labour justice system, has embarked on a robust public awareness campaign, which are costly to the court”.
The minister, therefore, asked that the sum P42,506,110 under the recurrent budget for Organisation 2100, be approved and stand part of the Schedule of Appropriation (2016/17) Bill 2016 and that the sum of P5,985,000 for Organisation 2100 under the Development Budget be approved and stand part of those estimates for the 2016/17 financial year.