Kenyans will soon be able to track the status of the pending court cases as well as report inept judiciary officers to Kenya’s judicial commission the Judiciary Service Commision (JSC), thanks to a new SMS-based service.
This, according to the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Boss Shollei, will enable the Judiciary to set up a data bank of all the pending cases to enable JSC determine the status of the cases, and the administrative actions to take.
“Currently, it’s very difficult for us at the judiciary to know how many cases are pending because there are those whose files are missing so we are asking members of the public to get in touch with us and let us know that their cases are pending because of missing files,” Shollei said.
Advocates and members of the public with pending court cases have been requested to submit the details of these cases by filling in a form — to be submitted to the Judiciary.
The JSC also asked them to forward any complaints, queries or services to the judiciary using an SMS number or an e-mail address.
“Once we receive the e-mail or the SMS, we will be able to respond to the request by going through our data bank,” said the Registrar.
The Kenyan Judiciary had to dismiss thousands of cases that had been lying “un-prosecuted” for several years in an effort to address the “case backlogs.” Reports have earlier revealed that on scrutiny, some of the cases were pending as the litigants had since died.
It is expected that the new service will enable the Kenyan Judiciary deal with these backlog of cases.
