Arusha High Court Division to open branch in Karatu

Arusha. A Criminal Session Centre for the High Court will be set up in Karatu to serve Mbulu, Ngorongoro and Karatu districts, it was announced here on Monday.

The Principal High Court Judge for Arusha, Ms Stella Mugasha, said clients of the court from the remote Ngorongoro, for instance, are often forced to travel up to 400 kilometres to Arusha during the critical sessions. Those from Simanjiro and Kiteto districts in neighbouring Manyara Region will have to cover 320 kilometres to reach Arusha to seek legal services at the Court, she said during the climax of the National Law Day.

“Establishment of a criminal session centre in Karatu District is one of our priorities in the coming year,” she said, noting that long distances from Arusha from the three districts has contributed to the delay in hearing of the cases.

Besides travelling long distances to reach Arusha, the clients also incur huge travelling expenses during the hearing of the cases at the High Court, she added.

Ms Mugasha added that the Case Flow Management Committees as well as the Bench Bar Committees will be strengthened at the district, regional and zonal levels in order to speed up the hearing. Efforts are underway to ensure the latter met at least twice a year.

The Principal Judge explained that cases which are pending for the past five to ten years at the High Court will have to be completed by the end of this year as are those which have dragged on for 18 months at the Resident Magistrate Courts and 12 months at the lower courts.

“What we are doing is to have a sustainable system in which all cases lodged before the courts are finalised in time,” she told an audience at the High Court grounds in the leafy city suburb where the Law Day is traditionally marked.

The Judiciary also intends to undertake a stock taking of all cases handled by each judge and magistrate each after three months and added that they were striving to stop unnecessary delay of the cases filed.

She lauded the government for increasing funds for the Court operations in the Arusha zone since October 2012, adding that this has enabled the High Court to hold nine sessions of murder cases during which 234 cases were finalised.

For his part, the chair of the Arusha-based advocates Modest Akida said despite the recent reforms in the legal sector, there are still a lot of complaints on the dispensation of justice, especially in regard to the delay in hearing of cases.

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