A Rule of Law Specialist with the Legal Resources Centre, Enock Jengre has urged government to resource the Legal Aid Commission to enhance justice delivery through the implementation of Ghana’s Case Tracking System (CTS).
According to him, inadequate budgetary allocation, logistics and lawyers to enable the Commission operate effectively and efficiently in the delivery of justice especially for the poor has caused pain and regret to many of such people.
Speaking at a one-day sensitisation forum in Tamale, he noted that resourcing the Commission would attract more lawyers and other paralegal experts to accept employment with the former thereby reducing the delay in prosecution of cases involving remand prison inmates and other suspects who are often denied the right to justice.
Congestion at the country’s prisons has been attributed to delay in gathering evidence for swift prosecution or justice delivery at the courts. Human rights activists have called for review of the justice delivery system in the legal representation of suspects for fair trials.
The Legal Aid Commission established under the 1992 constitution under Act 977, is less resourced with logistics, budgetary allocations and especially legal officers who are supposed to provide legal assistance to poor citizens who come into conflict with the law.
The Northern, North East and the Savannah Regions for instance can only boast of one lawyer assisting the Commission.
To effectively monitor the justice delivery system in the North, CSOs have called for a continuous sanitization and the need for a full implementation of a Case Tracking System in the rural communities. Through the CTS, state prosecution bodies such as the police, prisons, and the attorney general’s department among others, work in a collaborated manner to ensure that there is swift and timely delivery of justice.
The Rule of Law Specialist with the Legal Resources Centre, pointed out that adequate resourcing of the Legal Aid Commission with more legal personnel and other essential things it needs would enhance justice delivery for many vulnerable and less privileged people in society.
Meanwhile, Ms Daphne Lariba Nabila, Chief of Party for the Legal Resources Centre, urged the security services especially the police to use the CTS online portal to enhance the monitoring of cases they prosecute.
Source: https://savannahnewsonline.com/2021/09/02/lrc-rule-of-law-specialist-urges-govt-to-adequately-resource-legal-aid-commission/
