The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) South Rift Chapter has appealed to the Chief Justice, David Maraga to urgently deploy Judges to the region in a bid to reduce case backlog.
The Chair of the chapter, Geoffrey Kipng’etich said that the region lacks resident judges, for Environment and Land court and Employment and Labour relations court.
Presenting their petition to the Judiciary through Kericho Resident Judge, Asenath Ongeri who is also the visiting Judge in Bomet high court the LSK officials said that Bomet high court urgently required a resident judge since none was posted after the sacking of the previous resident judge Martin Muya last August.
The Bomet High Court Resident Judge was last year shown the door by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) following allegations of abuse of office and gross professional misconduct.
Kipngetich said that following his sacking the Bomet High Court has accumulated over 1,000 pending cases this year, 230 ruling and pending judgments waiting to be done, 200 registered criminal cases and large number of appeals from the low courts.
“We as Court Users suffer alot in terms of prosecuting cases especially on employment and labour relations issues as we are forced to register cases as far as Kitale since we don’t have a judge based in our region,” Kipgetich said.
He said that the visiting judge should handle Bomet high court cases twice a month since it was becoming expensive to travel Kericho for court matters.
“We also appeal to the JSC to deploy a registrar to Bomet High Court to handle environment and land matters instead of affected persons travelling to Kisumu or Eldoret,” Kipngetich said.
The official said that President Uhuru Kenyatta should swear-in the new judges to assist ease the backlog of cases in the law courts.
By Joseph Obwocha
