Courts dispose of 68,000 cases in three months

Courts have concluded a total of 68,075 cases between July and September, statistics from the Judiciary have shown.
A detailed performance report released by the Judiciary at the weekend, however, stated that 167,594 cases are still pending.
“As of October 14, a total of 68,075 cases had been completed across all court levels from the Supreme Court to the Magistrates Courts,” the Chief Registrar, Ms Sarah Langa Siu, said in a press statement at the weekend.
 She added that this means that the courts surpassed their quarterly case disposal target of 44,295 cases by 51 percent.

 “Overall, many of the courts met and or surpassed their quarterly targets. For example, the High Court, both at Circuit and Division levels completed 11,804 cases against their set target of 7,295 cases. The completed cases account for 14.29 percent of the cases at the High Court which stood at 64,052 at the start of the quarter,” she said.
“In effect, the High Court surpassed its quarterly disposal target by 43 percent. The Family Division had the highest case disposal among the Divisions with a performance of 1,944 cases while Mukono High Court topped the circuits with 1,084 cases,” Ms Langa added.
The performance report further showed that at the magisterial level, the Chief Magistrates courts had 65,610 cases brought forward from the last financial year with 39,864 cases newly registered.

Cases
Likewise, the Chief Magistrates courts disposed of 37,795 cases representing 33.94 percent of the disposal rate exceeding its quarterly disposal target of 25,000 cases. 
This meant that the Chief Magistrates courts met their quarterly target performance and surpassed the same by 43 percent. 
According to the performance report, the top performing Chief Magistrates courts were Makindye Chief Magistrates Court with 1,654, Mbarara Chief Magistrates Court with 1,416 cases and Fort Portal Chief Magistrates Court with 1,398 cases.
In regard to Magistrate Grade One Courts, 17,706 cases were completed. The target was to complete 11,250. This represents 43.32 percent of the total cases disposed of. The Magistrates Grade One also surpassed their quarterly disposal rate by 57 percent.

The top performing courts under the Grade One Magistrates were City Hall Court in Kampala with 1,424 cases, followed by Ngora Court with 615 cases and Law Development Centre with 528 cases.
Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo in his Judiciary annual performance report released in August, showed that the overall case backlog of all courts stood at 50,592 cases.  
The report also showed that the biggest backlog was at the High Court with a total of 31,657 cases pending disposal.