81 judges live in rented homes

THE Convention People’s Party (CPP) has described as unacceptable the situation where 81 judges are living in rented houses, while government officials and their cronies share lands acquired for putting up structures for public officials with impunity.
It also lamented the situation where, out of the 41 High courts in Accra, the State had used its resources to build only one, with the remaining housed in parts of the Supreme Court, the Cocoa Affairs Court premises and the premises of the Naval Volunteer Force, close to the beach, while almost all the district courts in Accra were housed in borrowed or temporary premises.
The CPP Shadow Minister of Justice and Attorney-General (A-G), Mr Bright Akwetey, made the startling revelation when he presented what the party termed, “How the CPP will do it” in Accra yesterday.
He added that those conditions for the judges and the courts “do not define Ghanaians as a people conscious of and concerned about the environment for dispensing justice and also expose judges to dangers, influences and threats”.
Mr Akwetey, who had been a Senior State Attorney for 21 years, blamed the perceived corruption and inefficiency in the judicial system on the deliberate neglect by successive governments of the judiciary.
“Judges have very little social life and have many constraints on the freedom of movement, freedom of speech and of association and so they are, as a rule, kept in what we know and call government bungalows,” he said.
He said it was for that reason that the CPP was against the selling of vacant public lands because it believed that such lands could be used to build bungalows for the judiciary who “represents the conscience of the people”.
Mr Akwetey, who is a private legal practitioner, expressed worry that while judges were poorly remunerated, Members of Parliament (MPs) were given personal loans denoted in dollars to buy personal cars immediately they assumed office and retired with fat ex-gratia and allowances, a development which frowned on equity.
He noted that even the Commercial courts were built and furnished by the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA), while the automation of other courts was donor funded.
He said the country continued to diminish its sovereignty over its own judiciary because the training of judges abroad to enable them to acquire specialised knowledge was funded by foreign agencies and that the recently established local Judicial Training Institute which was locally owned by the State needed adequate resources and funding.
He noted that there was no training institution at all for the para-legal staff of the judiciary.
He said a CPP government would give flesh and meaning to Ghana’s motto, Freedom and Justice, by investing heavily in the welfare and comfort, as well as training, of judges and provide the requisite infrastructure to ensure speedy trials.
Mr Akwetey said a CPP government would also not ignore complaints against the judiciary, saying what it would do was that it would monitor closely the activities of members of the Bench, with the view to helping them attain their full potential as judges.
On the office of the A-G, he reiterated the CPP’s position of decoupling the A-G’s office from that of the Minister of Justice.
He said as prescribed by the Constitution and the law, it was imperative that the AG’s office was given the requisite personnel, infrastructure and the necessary tools to help in the enacting, monitoring and enforcement of laws in Ghana.
Mr Akwetey said the situation where government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) regarded the A-G’s office as an appendage of the government and which they only contacted when there was a problem would stop under a CPP government.
“As the principal legal advisor of the government, the AG must have oversight responsibility over all legal issues affecting the work of MDAs,” he said.
He said the situation where remand prisoners stayed behind bars for years would be a thing of the past, adding that to permanently solve the problem, a CPP government would widely consult with all stakeholders to determine a suitable period beyond which nobody would be kept in any prison in Ghana.