Deputy CJ informed of challenges facing Arusha High Court

Arusha. The Arusha Zonal High Court is facing various challenges including a shortage of judges and staff, a situation that contributes to job underperformance, particularly in hearing of various cases.

The High Court Executive, Mr Edward Mbara, said this yesterday before Tanzania’s Deputy Chief Justice, Prof Juma Athuman, when on his official visit to the court to talk to staff and familiarize with the challenges facing the court.

The executive said to the Deputy Chief Justice that Arusha had a total of only three judges, who were not enough to attend to a big number of cases of clients while the number of primary courts was 54.

Mr Mbara added that the number of the court staff was 349 while that of resident magistrates was 23 including 58 magistrates of primary courts.

However, he told the deputy CJ that hearing of stalled cases in the court was encouraging as most of them were now ended at the right time.

"We are also facing the challenge of staff to stay at a work station for a long time without being promoted, a situation that discourages them.

“So, we request that those staff, who have stayed at their work stations for a long time should be promoted to motivate them,” he said.`.

For his part, the Deputy CJ said he had managed to visit various courts of the Arusha Zone, where, he said, there were many challenges that needed to be addressed, particularly the challenge of dilapidated court buildings.

"Some regions have completely no high courts and residents cover long distances in search of services as our aim is to ensure that every ward has a primary court.

“This is because we aim to construct 3,447 primary courts so that justice be done closer to all people," said the Deputy CJ.