The Office of the Master and Registrar at the Sierra Leone Judiciary has delayed in publishing quarterly record of all cases that go through the justice system.
The publication was to be done as part of their commitment towards increase transparency in case management and established structures at the local level to improve access to justice.
The Access to Justice Commitment is part of the second National Action Plans (NAP II) under the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which implementation period spans from July 2016 to June 2018.
This commitment was identified because citizens do not have access to information on court cases and there are certain cases, which require mediation and can be settled out of court.
And that, local structures will be established to address justice issues and government will publish, on a quarterly basis, updates on all cases starting July 2016.
Under this commitment, a recent scorecard issued by the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) highlighted some efforts made in the achieving the four milestones.
The Sierra Leone Police (SLP) they say is working with the Legal Aid Board to activate the child mediation panels with stakeholders in all 19 local councils, with some meetings held.
The SLP has also set up a system with trained and qualified staff on how to take pictures and fingerprints for evidence.
The process of setting the mediation panels in all police stations has started but still in the embryo stage.
“We are concerned that no publication has been done by the Judiciary regarding cases that goes through the system,” said BAN Coordinator, Abu Bakarr Kamara.
Kamara said their scorecard also identified the commitment on Records and Archives Management as a serious challenge. “Most cases the ACC are losing is as a result of the absence of records, but through the OGP they are now trying to develop a new law called an Archive Management Act.”
The Public Archives Act is an essential step in ensuring effective implementation of the Right to Access Information Act. As without proper records management systems of key government documents they cannot be disclosed publicly.
He added that effective records management is also important for accountable and transparent operation of public institutions. The drafting and gazetting of the National Records and Archives Bill has been done but still not tabled in Parliament.
The process of harmonising laws, policies and procedures for managing digital records with the RAI law and the open data, has already begun with the Ministries of Energy and Local Government and Rural Development established a library to harmonise their documents both hard and soft copies.
The Ministry of Information has not yet started the assessment of digital records in the government agencies to determine what exists and to develop structures for coordinating, capturing, preserving and sharing these records.
ZJ/21/11/17
By Zainab Joaque
Friday November 24, 2017.
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