Provinces urged to report why they need more magistrates

By TREVOR WAHUNE
SENIOR provincial magistrates have been urged to provide reports on why they need more magistrates.
Chief Magistrate Nerrie Eliakim told the Magisterial Service biennial conference in Port Moresby yesterday that all senior provincial magistrates, before sending requests for more magistrates to the government and Ministry of Justice, should provide an appropriate report, based on information sourced from their provincial IT data bases to justify their needs.
“Why the IT database? Because it would show proof of increase in case lodgments, and also would make it easy to use the information to conduct audits before further proposed reports,” she said.
“Without data, and statistics, we cannot prove to the government and the justice sector that you need more resources.
“You cannot go to the Department of Treasury, at budget time and say ‘we think we need more magistrates because we think we have an increase in annual lodgments’.
“Once we have all the data we can take it to them and say, yes this our proof.”
Eliakim urged the magistrates to manage their courts responsibly. She said although there were challenges such as police not preparing handout briefs on time and witnesses not showing up, magistrates were still the authority in their courts.
Eliakim asked senior provincial magistrates who attended the conference if the current processes used were competent with offenders’ human rights.
In the previous conference in 2017, the magistrates discussed “transformation in the magisterial services”.
This year’s theme was “excellence in district court service delivery”.