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{
    "id": 590146,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/590146/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 85,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Chepkong’a",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1154,
        "legal_name": "Samuel Kiprono Chepkonga",
        "slug": "samuel-kiprono-chepkonga"
    },
    "content": "have been clerks that have been assisting lawyers in their offices and have gained experience as a result of the association with lawyers. As a result of that, they have qualified to be known as Articled Clerks. They were given the opportunity to preside over these courts when this country had very few lawyers to preside over these courts. This is because at that time formal education in terms of the legal profession had not taken root in this country. However, we are graduating over 1,000 lawyers every year from the Kenya School of Law. It has, therefore, become necessary to ensure that we formalise that court to allow for lawyers to sit in those courts. However, we are looking at lawyers who are of three years standing. The proposed Bill proposes that it should be lawyers of, at least, five years standing but the Committee felt that that is too high a threshold in courts that are very informal in their nature. This Bill seeks to change the presiding officer of the court. The presiding officer will not be known as a magistrate; rather he will be called “an adjudicator”. So, we are moving away from formal courts to some informal processes. This court seeks to limit its pecuniary jurisdiction to a maximum of Kshs100,000. However, the Committee felt that because of inflationary issues, Kshs100,000 is too small a figure. We are proposing to increase that to Kshs200,000 because of the nature of the shilling having depreciated. It is, therefore, intended that the jurisdiction in terms of pecuniary be increased from Kshs100,000 to Kshs200,000. This court seeks to introduce the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism in which the adjudicator will request the parties to seek alternative forms of settling their conflict in terms of their claims. So, ADR has now been formalised in this particular legislation. Therefore, it will be incumbent upon the adjudicator to allow the parties in the first instance to see whether they can resolve their issues through ADR before they come to the Small Claims Court if the claim is below Kshs200,000. As the Leader of the Majority Party has mentioned, the language that will be used will be informal. For example, if all the parties are Kalenjin, they can use the Kalenjin language to prosecute their case and there will be an interpreter to the adjudicator, if the adjudicator does not speak the language of the affected parties. So, this is a very informal court. As you know, most of these claims arise out of very informal processes. I have known of transactions that are conveyed during the night and where parties give about Kshs200,000 when people are not seeing them. We have seen such transactions taking place. It is so informal that when there is disagreement there is no formality in terms of what was written as a contract. So, you allow the parties to tell us what time of the night it was, how it was exchanged or who may have seen the parties meeting. It is conducted in an informal way. I have seen parties meeting in very informal processes. This court will also allow the administration of oath to that particular ethnic group."
}