If you’ve been depending on mobile courts for quick access to justice, try finding an alternative means as more than 50 mobile courts operations will have to be suspended due to a sh16.7 billion budget cut on the Judiciary.
Chief Justice David Maraga has expressed concerns after the government slashed out the judiciary budget by sh16.7 billion in this year budget allocation.
Maraga says the drastic cuts will impact on the construction of mobile courts and other projects that were put in place to help in court operations.
“More than 70 courts construction projects will without doubt stall together with other judicial services,” said Maraga.
Maraga says clearance of case backlog will also be affected. The CJ Had directed that all cases that have been in court for more than 5 years be cleared out by December 2018.
Maraga added that, after parliament passed the appropriation Act, the judiciary’s total budget allocation was further reduced to sh14.5 Billion contrary to the sh31.2 billion they had requested for in the 2017/2018 budget allocation.
The CJ is also concerned that further complications in working on the judiciary projects may arise given that the World Bank funding that financed the projects expires in December and the government doesn’t seem to have an interest in expanding it.
“By December, it is estimated that 7.2 billion will have been disbursed and 4.3 billion unutilized. The repercussions for this are unimaginable, with a flood of incomplete projects across the country,” said Maraga.
