Minister details department’s performances in Parliament

National

Minister for Justice and Attorney-General Davis Steven has highlighted some of the department’s 2017 performances in Parliament.
Steven said the department’s corporate plan 2011- 2015 saw projects completed as well as start of new projects, programmes and initiatives. He said there were four performance areas in the department: the legal policy and legislative reforms, state legal services, justice administration and infrastructure.
The legal policy and legislative reforms in 2017 saw a number of legislations deferred to 2018. Among them were the court restructure bill and the independent commission against corruption bill.
He said they made progress in other key activities including the family protection regulations that was gazetted and now in operation to provide protection for family members as regards domestic violence.
Steven said training and awareness programmes continued to combat human trafficking and people smuggling, as well as anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. He said in enhancing state legal services, the Office of State Solicitor and Office of the Solicitor General were highly professional in their overall performances this year. Steven said although there were increased workload, there were more lawyers and a lot of state liability had been fully represented in the courts during the period.
He said in making justice administration effective, they continued to supervise 1676 village courts in the country, with 10,628 court officials were on the payroll.