Magistrate: Bring inmates to court

National, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday June 20th, 2013

 A SENIOR district magistrate in Mt Hagen, Western Highlands, yesterday lashed out at police for failing to bring remandees to court.

Jeremiah Singomat said he was tired of adjourning committal cases because the police prosecution had problems with transporting remandees to court.

He said that the police department received bigger funding from the national Government unlike other departments and should not have transport problems.

“If prosecution division does not have vehicles to transport remandees from Baisu to court, then they must ask other police divisions to help,” he told a lone police prosecutor in the court room.

Singomat said the remandees must be transported on time from Baisu jail into the court house to have their cases heard.

“It’s not good to say, police prosecution have problems with transport and keep the remandees back in the jail,” he said.

The magistrate said that he adjourned many committal cases because the remandees were not present in the court room.

He said that he was already fed up and wanted prosecution to seek assistance from other divisions within the police force to assist them with transport to bring in the remandees on time for their cases.

He also urged police arresting officers to prepare the files of the offenders they arrested and charged on time.

Singomat said that for some cases it was taking the arresting officer almost six month to come up with their files.

He said that it was time consuming when he had to adjourn some cases because the files of offenders appearing in court were not ready.

He added that some cases for March were not ready to be heard because the arresting officers did not collect witnesses’ statements and had files ready for the court.

He urged arresting officers to pull up their socks and work smarter and have files completed and ready on time before the defendants appeared in court.