Steven: Village court will play active role supporting LLG’s

BY JEFFREY ELAPA
VILLAGE courts will play an active role in child protection, gender-based violence, juvenile justice and support the local level government governance system and processes, says Minister for Justice and Attorney-General Davis Steven.
When presenting the village court status report to Parliament, Steven said village courts would play a greater role community justice system.
It now placed a demand on the capability and resources of the village court system.
Steven said as a result, his department had tried to address needs and capacity by increasing the number of village court officials from seven to 11 per village court.
He said the request for allowances for four additional village court officials had been addressed.
There are 22 provincial village court liaison officers in each province for better supervision, monitoring and reporting purposes.
Steven said the department had also organised and implemented training programmes for officials in conjunction with development partners and donors on child protection, gender-based violence, juvenile justice and administrative matters.
He said they had also organised and implemented village court inspections to ascertain the performances and challenges being faced by village courts in each province.
Steven said a draft village court policy was being finalised and would be submitted to Cabinet in September.
This will reflect the Government’s planning, policies, inter-governmental relations such as autonomy, allowance processes, monitoring and evaluation, case management, improve capability of the village court secretariat and other operation matters.