Pius Bigirimana, the Judiciary Permanent Secretary has revealed that cases worth shs77 trillion are trapped in the Commercial Division of the High Court as backlog because of lack of adequate funds to adjudicate them.
He said that if the funding was available and these cases were disposed of, Uganda wouldn’t even need to borrow money from the World Bank to finance its national budget.
“I have got a list of case categories which come to a total of shs83 trillion as of December 2023 but now, they have reduced to dhd77 trillion because of the Judges who were put in Commercial court, it has reduced a bit. This money which is tied up in the Commercial court, we don’t even have to go and borrow money from the World Bank. These are cases in construction, banking, insolvency positions, intellectual property and loans. All this is money tied up there, but I think finance also has some issues,” Bigirima said.
While appearing before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee to defend the Judiciary’s Ministerial Policy Statement for financial year 2024/24, Bigirimana informed the lawmakers that if this backlog is to be reduced, more Judges have to be recruited to hear the cases and also promote alternative dispute resolution.
Documents available to the legal committee indicated that as at February 2023, case backlog stood at 42,907 cases against a caseload of 179,984 pending cases.
Meager resources
Bigirimana also protested the decision by the Ministry of Finance to reduce the budget for the Judiciary from shs392 billion to shs362 billion in the coming financial year. He said that in the medium term, the Judiciary had requested for a budget increase to at least shs600 billion.
The Ministry of Finance gave us a budget ceiling of UGX 362 billion and we thought that that was very unfair and unreasonable because you can’t reduce the budget for the Judiciary when actually, you are supposed to be adding on. I am under strict instructions from the Chief Justice that he has never broken the law, he doesn’t intend to break the law now and in future and therefore, what the Ministry of Finance has done is to try trap him in the trap of breaking the law, so he isn’t about to do that, said Bigirimana.
The Secretary to Judiciary added that the protest being put up by the Judiciary has seen the institution being locked out of the System put in place by the Ministry of Finance.
“This morning, I had a phone call with Secretary to Treasury, he was asking me, why we haven’t submitted our budget details I told him that I don’t want to break the law and he said if you don’t submit to us and we submit to Parliament we shall leave you out, and I told him, if that is your choice go ahead. So, I have left him because in the system, you can’t make budget estimates proposals when you don’t follow the ceiling they have given you. You can’t submit because the system can’t allow me in,” said Bigirimana.
New dawn
Bigirimana also revealed that President Yoweri Museveni is expected to commission the newly constructed Supreme Court and Court of Appeal buildings in Kampala on April, 12, 2024.
“I also want to thank you for taking time off to come and visit us at our offices to see the construction that was going on. By the time you came in, we were almost completing. I would like to inform you that we have now finished. We are waiting for President Museveni to come and commission. ”
