Judiciary moves to clear pending children cases

The Judiciary will from Monday, November 30, 2015 embark on a five-day crash exercise to clear a backlog of over 4,000 children cases at the Milimani Law Courts.

In a statement to the press, the judiciary said that the exercise dubbed The Children’s Court Service Week targets 4,435 children matters that accumulated between January 2002 and December 2010 and will end on Friday, December 4, 2015.

During the week, the Children’s Court will hear cases where action has not been taken by the parties for more than a year.

The parties will also be required to inform the court whether or not they intend to proceed with their cases.

The court will hear the active cases and deliver judgments and close files where necessary.

The Judiciary has separately, through its notice boards at Milimani Law Courts and online at the Judiciary and Kenya Law websites, notified parties with pending children cases to attend court.

The exercise is intended to manage the court’s caseload by ridding the system of dead cases to enhance efficient and smooth operation of the Children’s Court.

This comes just a week after Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga announced that judges, magistrates and staff are now under performance contracts to help the newly rolled out Daily Court Returns Template (DCRT) and to measure judicial output on a daily basis.

Mutunga further noted that there has been an improvement in access to justice through various initiatives including recruitment of more judges, increasing number of courts, gazettement of various rules, introduction of payment systems and establishment of more court stations.

Additionally, he noted that the court’s caseload stands at 119 cases, stating that a new strategy to speed up hearing and determination of the cases has been set.

The CJ also affirmed that the court construction and rehabilitation works continue in over 100 sites with the annual training programs on-going.