Quality of justice remains uncompromised – Pereira
In her first address as Acting Chief Justice, Ms. Pereira stated that in these economic times, there are many challenges being faced by the court in different countries and territories, one being the excessive use of paper. She added that an e-Filing pilot project will be initiated, as a possible solution to this unbearable problem.
Ag. Chief Justice Honourable Justice Janice Pereira made this announcement while addressing law enforcers via web-link, to commemorate the beginning of the new law year, yesterday September 18, 2012.
In her remarks, speaking on the theme of improving efficiency and integrity in the administration of justice in times of economic adversity, she stated that the times we are living in are very difficult, where sustainability demands that businesses responsibly manage limited resources and still remain productive.
She added that “it is no different for us in the judiciary, the impact of the economic downturn is being felt on all our member states and territories, and no less so on the judiciary.”
Justice Pereira said the case load of the courts across the region, continues to increase steadily, which in turn leads to an increase in administrative cost in the face of shrinking budgets and decreased contributions.
“However, the judiciary of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, although faced with resulting challenges, one which is the absence of the optimum court of judges will continue to maintain its efficiency with the available resources. I wish to emphasize that the quality of justice will not be compromised, not even in the harsh and difficult economic times.”
With that commitment, as mentioned earlier, the judiciary has embarked on several initiatives to help improve efficiency in the face of the world economic adversity, “which has impacted our member states and territories.”
She continued by saying, the volume of paper being generated and which needs to be stored is a significant problem for the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in all the member states and countries.
“…the buildup of paper creates serious processing challenges for all court personnel and places a significant strain on facilities as court must constantly search for space to file and store legal documents in buildings which are already bursting at the seams. This has necessitated the court, embracing the use of modern technology, aimed at improving the efficiency of our systems.”
According to Justice Janice Pereira, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court has for some time now, been exploring the implementation of electronic case files, in the efforts of increasing efficiency in the area of filing documents and records management.
She stated that the court is assiduously working to realize its vision of paper on demand mitigation system in an effort to cope with the burdening use of paper for court records.
As a solution, in this year, in the month of August, an idea for an e-Filing initiative was presented for filing appeals for the bar members. The bar welcomed the program, and is anxious to realize the implementation.
“It is expected that the successful introduction of e-Filing, will eventually help to eliminate, to a large extent the use of paper in the Eastern Caribbean supreme Court, cutting back on the need for the physical space to store paper and the man power to transport physical files, not only within the court houses but across member states and territories.”
She added that once the pilot project is successfully completed, all files are hoped to be filed electronically.
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12 Responses to “Quality of justice remains uncompromised – Pereira ”
Just look around in our community and you will see in the faces of those person's who are heads of agencies, statutory bodies, important political offices, banks and vice-in many cases their silence on the proliferation of "wrong" in our society and their refusal to correct the "wrongs" have cause most of them to age before their time and some cases have hastened their arrival with the "old grim reaper"!