A Rule of Law Specialist with the Legal Resources Center, Enoch Jengre has urged government and Parliament to expedite action on the passage of the Community Service Bill which has been drafted since 2018 and meant to decongest Ghana’s prisons.
The passage of the non-custodian bill, according to him, has been long overdue and must be pushed through under the 8th Parliament.
He was speaking during a stakeholder Town Hall meeting held in Ho to educate the public on the Ghana Case Tracking System (CTS).
In an interview with Starr News, the Rule of Law Specialist stated that “Public awareness, create sensitization, and that is even market women. We want everyone to ensure that once you are aware you demand that the system be used.”
“Because if it is used, we will have more confidence in our justice delivery system if it is used it means that cases once they get to the court will not keep long, if it is used it means that we will not be hearing as much as possible issues of missing dockers because everything is tracked electronically, we are not going to use anything manual we will minimize manual interaction in justice delivery in Ghana.”
He went on to add that “so, we will engage every necessary stakeholder here so that they will be aware and they are going to serve as ambassadors. They will go and relay the information to their groups or constituents so that together we can all rally around this particular project because the system has come it’s Ghana government project it is not for us, we are only saying that it is supposed to be utilized.”
He ended by emphasizing that the CTS is interested in the utilization of the bill because it will create a bright and better justice delivery system in subsequent years.
“If it is not utilized, we will go back to square zero but that is not where I think we want to go to because we want to see a future where our justice delivery system, there is confidence in it, where cases that are supposed to be trialed within a reasonable time are trialed where citizens have maximum confidence in our justice delivery system and there is minimal political interference. That is what the CTS makes provision for and if it is effectively utilized”, he added.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Bernice Mensah