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{
    "id": 590880,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/590880/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 180,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ochieng",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2955,
        "legal_name": "David Ouma Ochieng'",
        "slug": "david-ouma-ochieng"
    },
    "content": "at the level of the Court of Appeal. This person will supervise the whole bureaucracy of the Court of Appeal. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, you may not know this, but one of the major issues in the Court of Appeal or our Judiciary today, is that we have clerks who have been in some of these courts for as long as 20 or 30 years. When you post a judge to a court, the clerk tells the judge that, “we do not do it this way here.” With this kind of a system, we are hoping that the Judiciary or the Court of Appeal is able to manage its internal transfer of clerks so that no one stays in the same station for more than five years to the level that they get comfort that they are even able to direct the judges on what to do. This happens today and that is why when we recently had mass transfers in the Judiciary, you heard the clerks complaining and saying: “No, we do not want to move.” Some of these are the ones who have ensured that corruption thrive in the Judiciary. With this kind of system, they are able to manage within their ranks how to do this. One of the major issues is records management. You will hear: “A court file has disappeared, we cannot trace the court file and we cannot do this.” In the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, we have ensured that we give the Judiciary enough money to automate, digitise and ensure that there is no room for someone to claim files have disappeared. This week something very funny happened at the Coast. Some rolls of bhang were kept as exhibits. When they were asked for by the courts, police said that those rolls of bhang had been eaten up by rats. It was in the newspapers all over the place. It was even in the news. Those rats ate 500 rolls of bhang which were exhibits in court and that they could not be found. With proper provisions like we have made in the Court of Appeal (Organization and Administration) Bill, we are hoping that the courts will put up proper records management systems which will ensure transparency above all. Secondly, Hon. Nyaga has said that everyone gets to know what is happening at every point in time. If you are a litigant in that court or a member of the public and you want to know the status of a case, you are able to click a button and get this. We hope that the managers of that court are listening. One very important innovation of this Bill is that we now have a substantive Registrar of the Court of Appeal who will report to the Chief Registrar, but will also have some level of independence in running and managing that level of the court at his or her ability, based on what is provided for in the law. I want to request the managers and judges of this court to start churning out the jurisprudence that all of us will be proud of and that will give direction to this country in matters of law. Thank you very much. I support."
}