CJ Owiny-Dollo to fight favouritism in Judiciary

All magistrates will have an opportunity to serve in both upcountry and city courts, a move aimed at eliminating favouritism, Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo has said.

Justice Owiny-Dollo said the Judiciary appointment letters clearly state that every judicial officer should be ready to be deployed and work in any part of the country including hard-to-reach areas.

“This tendency of having some magistrates rotated around Kajjansi, Nabweru, Nakawa, and others rotated  in Ssingo, Kisoro should stop. There won’t be a Kaabongo magistrate and a Kampala magistrate. Your appointment letter says you will work in all parts of the country,” he said, attracting an applause from more than 200 magistrates and registrars, who were attending a two-day annual conference in Kampala, yesterday.

Justice Owiny-Dollo said the Judiciary would introduce a computerised system that will automatically show all the previous duty stations where a judicial officer has been before, adding that this would minimise rotating them in the same location for long.

“So, soon all the transfers will be computerised so that you are not rotated in one place just because you are a nephew, niece to someone in top management so that equity is achieved and discrimination dealt away with,”  he said.

Principal Judge Flavian Zeija criticised taking of bribes by magistrates.

“…..And let’s face it, it’s public knowledge that there is consistent allegations that some of your worships abuse your discretion in making decisions on release on bail. Reported incidents of abuse of bail discretion include soliciting or receiving bribes to grant bail and or favourable bail terms and vice versa or refusing to grant bail or granting bail on harsh and unreasonable terms because the accused has not given a bribe,” he said.

He added: “I continue to receive many complaints about some judicial officers being perpetual absentees, some judicial officers not working on Mondays and Fridays...”

The Principal Judge also cited delayed delivery of judgments and rulings, mismanagement of court properties, deplorable state of most archive rooms and exhibit stores, as some other shortcomings in the Judiciary.

Justice Zeija also decried the poor customer care for the litigants.

“Customer care remains one of the areas that our officers across board continue to perform poorly [in]. Always remember that we derive and exercise judicial power in the name of the people who come to our courts to seek our service,” he said.

He added: “Without those people, we would not hold these offices. Our court users deserve to be served with dignity and expedience. Therefore, instances of registry staff, court clerks and some judicial officers lacking basic tenets of customer care must be rectified.”