The Chief Justice of Uganda, Dr Flavian Zeija has attributed the delayed trial of detainees in the courts of law to inadequate budget allocations to the Judiciary across the country.
“Am glad you are in Parliament, help us to get our budget increased, that’s where the problem is. At the moment, I have 88 judges of the High Court, they are supposed to be 150, now that’s where the problem is. This court you see, although we don’t have space, they are supposed to be having like four or five judges, but I can’t get them” he said.
Dr Zeija further revealed that he will not recruit any judges in the next financial year since the budget hasn’t been appropriated to the judiciary.
“I would want to see a situation where I have a full house of high court judges, all the magistrates I need. We did a sample with this fellow who killed in Ggaba, the reason we did that is that I wanted to show you that it’s possible, these cases can come in the court and within one week you are out, but what we need is manpower” he said.
The Chief Justice made the remarks in response to Nansana Municipality MP Zambaali Bulasio Mukasa, who earlier on decried rising cases of detention without trial across Ugandan prisons, during the Open Day Court at Wakiso High Court in Nabweru on Tuesday.
Zambaali had initially pointed out that limited judicial manpower and case backlog were the main reasons for the delayed hearings of a number of detainees across the country.
“Across Uganda prisons, I am not so certain of the number but I am sure more than 79,000 inmates a year and 36,000 remand prisoners awaiting trials” he said.
He added, “In Wakiso prison alone, I was talking to my chairman LC5, he didn’t give me the exact number but he indicated that over 4,000 inmates with more than 2,200 are on remand, largely because of delayed hearings, limited judicial manpower and case backlog”.
Zambaali further applauded the judiciary for opening criminal sessions at the court in order to reduce backlog and speed up justice delivery.
