Lawyer Issah Mahmudu, Regional Director of the Legal Aid Commission has called on Journalist in the Northern region to find interest in reporting court processes and proceedings.
This according to him will help improve upon the judicial processes and also broaden the knowledge of individual court users for a better understanding in the field.
He explained that as the fourth realm of the land, one of its duties is to educate the public, and advised media practitioners to ensure that what they are impacting to their audience was the right thing.
Lawyer Issah Mahmudu, was speaking at a two-day review meeting on access to justice held in tamale, at the UDS premises.
The objective of the workshop was to review the Court User’s Committee’s (CUC’s) work and also to form part of the implementation of the Africa Women Lawyers Association’s (AWLA’s) 2-years STAR Ghana project, on Strengthening Civic Participation and Social Accountability in Justice Delivery in the country.
In an interview with the Executive Director of AWLA, Madam Edna Kumi indicated findings further revealed that most Ghanaians did not understand the judicial process, and are also confronted with issues like financial difficulty in acquiring services of lawyers, delays in court proceedings as a result of transfer of judges, adjournment, and filing fee among others.
According to her, they observed that some of these numerous reasons accounted for many Ghanaians withdrawing cases from the judicial service and resorting to fetish priests and several spiritual means to deal with issues, adding that such spiritual consultations usually ended up in disappointment therefore the need to establish the committee to help such persons.
The Court Users Committee was set up to target the various courts, identify their challenges as well as the problems its users faced and come out with effective measures to deal with the issues.
Lawyer Mahmudu further commented AWLA for the initiative, indicating that the creation of the CUC will go a long way to better strengthen our judicial system.
The committee consist of members from AWLA, Ghana Police Service, Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit ( DOVVSU) ,Department of Social Welfare, Legal Aid Scheme, People Wth Disability, Association of Magistrates and Judges, Commission on Human Right and Administrative Justice(CHRAJ) , and representative from the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly.
Source:Fiilafmonline/ShawanaYussif
