Minister Masutha visits Protea Magistrates’ Court
The court is also experiencing special issues as the building is housed in was initially a school according to the minister.
Minister of Correctional Services and Justice, Michael Masutha, undertook a visit to the Protea Magistrates’ Court in Protea North on Thursday, July 26.
During his visit, the minister conducted a walkabout in the court and heard stories from community members who had been waiting months to get their cases heard in court.
One of the clients at the court had been waiting for a period as long as six months to get their maintenance case heard. Minister Masutha noted that the benchmark for the turnaround time in which civil matters should be heard 90 days.
“It is clear that the volumes of cases are just too heavy for the size of the operation that we running here. One of the ways we are looking at to reduce the waiting period is to introduce maintenance cases in the satellite courts,” he alluded.
On January 5, the amendments to the Maintenance Act of 2015 were implemented. These amendments meant that parents who were defaulting on their maintenance payments could be blacklisted and those who could not be located could be traced using information acquired from service network providers.
“We think those measures would also help to reduce the incidents of defaulting which would also help, in turn, reduce the court rolls in terms of having to pursue defaulters,” said the minister.
Protea Magistrate’s Court is also experiencing special issues as the building is housed in was initially a school according to the minister. The court handles both criminal and civil cases which means it experiences high traffic volumes.
“We are looking at various options in terms of immediate interventions. We may have to look at deploying some park homes at some of the branches that are part of this court such as Newlands, Meadowlands, Kliptown etc. so that people may have a full service close to their homes,” the minister explained.
The minister, however, noted that budget cuts due to the streamlining of funds to the education department have marred his department’s efforts to rectify the infrastructural and personnel issues facing courts such as Protea Magistrates’ Court.
The Department of Correctional Services has recently proposed that non-violent offenders be released in an effort to reduce high prison numbers which would translate into more humane prison conditions for offenders as part of Mandela Day.
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