Koforidua, July 28, GNA – The government was committed to strengthening the institutions engaged in the administration of justice because of its belief that effective delivery of justice was key to protecting and enhancing democratic values in the country, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, had declared.
He was addressing a durbar of State Attorneys drawn from the southern sector comprising the Volta, Eastern, Western and Central Regions as well as divisional heads from the headquarters at Koforidua on Monday.
Papa Owusu-Ankomah noted that “a country where people perceive the administration of justice to be ineffective, there is a gradual breakdown of law and order and where justice is perceived to be accessible only to a privileged few, adherence to and observance of the rule of law is undermined.”
According to the Minister, “in a country where the law is perceived to be a tool designed to keep down the marginalised and vulnerable, laws become a yoke or an albatross around the necks of citizens, some of whom may wrongly decide to remove the yoke or albatross through illegal acts.”
To promote discipline and respect of the law in the country, Papa Owusu -Ankomah stressed that the laws must not only work but must be seen to be working, irrespective of one’s social, economic or political standing when the laws were breached.
Papa Owusu-Ankomah stressed the need for the Attorney General’s Department to deepen and strengthen the level of collaboration with other institutions such as the judiciary, police and prison services towards securing a system of justice delivery the country would be proud of.
He mentioned some of the human and logistic constraints facing the Department and said to improve its institutional capacity, the Legal Sector Reform Programme being funded by the World Bank, was being implemented, including the provision of computers to the regional offices.
To reduce the delays in the dispensation of justice, Papa Owusu-Ankomah hinted that his Ministry and the Chief Justice were considering various options, including instituting night courts and reviewing the annual long judicial “Summer holidays”.
The Minister later presented two computers and accessories each to the representatives of the four regions participating at the durbar.
In his remarks on the factors affecting speedy delivery of justice in the Eastern Region, the Supervising High Court Judge of Koforidua, Mr Justice Kobena A. Acquaye, mentioned the few number of State Attorneys, poor police prosecution of cases due to lack of legal training and adjournments sought by members of the Bar.
He appealed to the Minister to help solve problems confronting the judiciary, especially accommodation and means of transport for magistrates and commended the government for the on-going computerisation of the courts.
The Deputy Regional Police Commander, Chief Superintendent Alhaji Amadu Mahama, blamed some of the lapses of the police in the enforcement of the law on the lack of complementary support from other judicial agencies, obsolete laws such as those affecting drug trafficking and black marketeering as well as the menace posed by Fulani herdsmen in the rural areas.
He mentioned clashes over land disputes, which, he noted, could also affect the President’s Special Initiatives and maintenance of law and order.
The chief of Koforidua-Ada, Odeefour Boadi Asiedu, expressed concern about the interference and uncomplimentary pronouncements by some judges about the chieftaincy institution, especially in the adjudication of chieftaincy disputes.
He noted that the ruling by some judges in chieftaincy disputes sometimes seemed to expose their partisan interests in the cases and hoped the esteem of the institution would be upheld by the courts without a semblance of bias.
The Eastern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Bar Association, Mr Asante Ansong, stressed the need for measures to speed up the dispensation of justice, especially those involving indictment cases to save long incarceration of innocent persons in prison custody.
Source: GhanaWeb
