Judiciary Shuffles 43 Magistrates Grade I
The Chief Registrar, His Worship Paul Gadenya
KAMPALA:\r\nAt\r\nleast 43 Magistrates Grade One have been shuffled in a bid to align them\r\n(magistrates) to workloads as well as fill the gaps left by the recent\r\npromotions.
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The\r\nChief Justice, Bart M. Katureebe, has also assigned two Senior Principal\r\nMagistrates Grade One: H/W Charles Yeteise and H/W Jessica Chemeri, the\r\nresponsibilities of acting Chief Magistrates to fill the vacant positions in\r\nthe stations of Hoima and Kapchorwa.
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Announcing\r\nyet another massive judicial officers’ transfer on February 23 2016, the Chief\r\nRegistrar, His Worship Gadenya Paul Wolimbwa, said the changes take immediate\r\neffect. He said another group of 57 new magistrates appointed in January by the\r\nJudicial Service Commission (JSC) would be sworn-in by the Chief Justice at the\r\nHigh Court in Kampala on Friday\r\nFebruary 26 and\r\nalso deployed immediately.
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"The\r\nobjective is to make sure that every district in this country has a\r\nmagistrate,” explains Mr. Gadenya, adding that most of the stations in the\r\ncountry been given more than one magistrate.
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"Magistrates\r\nare deployed based on workload available at individual stations. This has been\r\ndone to make sure that a magistrate handles at least 400 cases in a year and\r\nhas adequate time to do the work very well.
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"In\r\nthe past we have had magistrates dealing with too many cases, which results\r\ninto hurried justice which sometimes does not work in favor of the litigants.\r\nSo we have addressed that situation by aligning magistrates to workload and\r\nrecruiting additional magistrates.”
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Some\r\nof the transfers of magistrates who have been in the system are in line with\r\nthe Judiciary’s policy to move officers who serve in particular stations for at\r\nleast two years, to other places. Some were transferred to fill the gaps left\r\nby magistrates’ grade one who were promoted to chief magistrates ranks by JSC\r\nin December 2015, whereas others were moved from hard-to-reach areas to soft\r\nareas and vice-versa as per the policy.
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"Our\r\npolicy is that every magistrate should be able to work in any part of this\r\ncountry, and those who work in hard to reach areas should not be left there\r\npermanently…We have also tried as much as possible to balance the men and women\r\nso that people can have a good feel of the justice system,’’ said His Worship\r\nGadenya.
Posted 25th, February 2016
