THE Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, has stressed the need for staff of the Judicial Service to focus on trends that impact negatively on their work.
She said the incidence of staff delaying cases on grounds of bias and the soliciting of petty bribes from litigants did not augur well for the image of the service.
Speaking at the 4th Annual Triennial Delegates Conference of Judicial Staff in Takoradi yesterday, Mrs Justice Wood pointed out that these unacceptable factors had contributed in no small measure to effectively deny litigants of their constitutional rights to expeditious and fair trial.
The conference was on the theme: Uniting to Ensure Better Working Conditions and Success of Judicial Reform.”
She said to save the situation, the first approach should be the attitude of staff to work, emphasising that “it does not appear to me that we realise that none of us was forced into joining this respectable and important organisation, whose main business is to ensure that people who have suffered wrongs, approach us for redress”.
“If we understand our existence, if we appreciate the pain and anxiety people who approach the courts of justice go through, if we catch the vision and understand our mission, namely that we are service providers to court users, our attitude towards them and the quality of service we have, on our own volition offered to provide will be markedly different,” she added.
Mrs Justice Wood said if the judicial staff understood their calling that they were not doing court users a favour, the shabby and humiliating treatment some of them gave to lawyers, litigants and their witnesses would cease.
She expressed the wish that “one and all would change their mindset and put their noses on the ground and work as if their lives depended on the service”.
The Chief Justice also called the attention of the staff to complaints of corrupt practices and said it was regrettable that some went to the extent of posing as lawyers and duping the public.
As the third arm of government, she said, the service had an obligation to serve the general public at all times with truth.
She said in recent years, the notion of access to justice had attracted increasing attention, particularly in judicial reforms, adding that the processes of judicial reform worldwide had strengthened the judiciary’s role in enhancing transparency and accountability in governance.
The Chief Justice said the many reforms embarked upon were intended to eliminate institutional failures or weaknesses within the legal system and increase access to justice by the citizenry.
She was, however, happy that various men and women in the service had undertaken various courses in several disciplines to upgrade their professional skills.
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