The judiciary in Uganda has vowed to instill zero tolerance to corruption in the judicial system and case backlog from courts countrywide through systems and periodic monitoring.
These commitments were made on November 25, 2024, at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kampala while presenting the status of implementation of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) manifesto commitments for the period from 2021 to October 2024.
The Permanent Secretary to the Judiciary, Dr. Pius Birigimana, revealed that the Judiciary has instilled systems that will greatly reduce corruption tendencies in courts, saying that they will minimize human-to-human contact in the delivery of services and thus reduce incidences of corruption.
”We rolled out the Electronic Court Case Management System (ECMIS), an IT-based system that automates the entire process of a court case life cycle right from filing (e-filing) to archival (e-archival),” he said.
“We also rolled out the Performance Enhancement Tool (PET), aimed at providing a systematic approach to dealing with change in performance evaluation, from the current paper-based public service assessment to a 360-degree IT-based assessment. We believe this will greatly reduce cases of corruption in courts,” Dr. Bigirimana added.
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In an interview with the Chief Registrar at Judiciary, HW Sarah Siu Langa said that it is not right that the number of case backlogs is rising but rather on the decrease, with case backlog being at 32% in the year 2020/21 (of the 161,054 total pending cases in court, 51,748 cases were backlogged) and as per 2024/25, those reduced to 25.03%.
“A case is considered a backlog if it has spent two or more years in the court system before it has been resolved. We are resolving case backlog using the 2017 strategy, which advocated for a change in people’s attitudes, simplifying law so that an ordinary person can understand it, and increasing our infrastructure,” she noted.
Amongst the commitments, the Judiciary vowed to uphold the Administration of Judiciary Act 2020, which serves to provide for the efficient and effective administration of the Judiciary, strengthen its independence, and provide for retirement benefits of judicial officers and related matters.
