Corruption in Judiciary is real - GII

Accra, Nov. 08, GNA - Corruption in the Judiciary is real and could not be considered as a perception, a report on Judicial Corruption Monitoring Exercise in Ghana has said.

The report was the result of a survey conducted by students from Faculties of Law at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and University of Ghana.

A total of 15 judges, 50 lawyers, 55 judicial staff and 85 litigants from Accra and Tema were interviewed while in Kumasi metropolis eight judges, 84 lawyers, 67 judicial staff and 65 litigants were interviewed. Ghana Integrity Initiative, (GII) a local chapter of Transparency International and German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) jointly undertook the research, which focused on land and commercial cases.

The report was intended to establish the "validity" or accuracy of the widely held perception that the judiciary was corrupt.

The questions touched on degree of perceived corruption by the judicial staff, attempted instances of influence and interference of judicial staff by people, Judges knowledge of code of ethics, judicial staff views on impropriety in relation to their work.

The report brought up issues on missing dockets, delays in delivering judgments, frequent adjournments and absence of lawyers among other issues.

The report based on a qualitative and quantitative research in Accra, Tema and Kumasi actors were aware of existence of corruption and had in some cases, they themselves experienced it in one way or other. Mr Vitus Azeem Executive Secretary of GII who discussed the report noted that in Kumasi some of the litigants were dissatisfied with delayed in delivery of judgments, others also did not want to use the court because they had spent more than the amount involved in a case. Mr Azeem said 36 per cent had no trust in the law courts while other respondents complained about failure and lateness of sitting of some Judges.

He said the report called for urgent steps to be taken to institute internal measures within the judiciary to check the incidence of corruption.

It also called for more complaint desks in every High Court in the country so that key stakeholders could lodge complainants about the behaviours of Judges, Magistrates and Judicial staff.

Further more the computerization of the court should be expedited in order to reduce the frequency of contact between litigants or their lawyers and judicial staff while enforcing the judicial code of ethics. The report recommended to the Ghana Bar Association to begin playing a proactive role in regulating the conducts of lawyers since they were key in the judicial process.