MANILA – Sen. Richard Gordon was pushing for the creation of more courts to reduce the backlog of cases.
A number of courts across the country have overloaded dockets, said Gordon, chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights.
“To me, one of the biggest problems in this country is the slow turn of the wheel of justice,” he said.
“If there are any proposals to create additional court branches, I’m going to support it.”
Bills creating 59 additional branches – 50 regional trial courts, two metropolitan trial courts, three municipal circuit trial courts, and four municipal trial courts – in different provinces and cities have been filed in the Senate, Gordon noted.
The judiciary will spend P584 million for the salaries and benefits of additional personnel to be hired for the proposed court branches, he said, citing computations from the Supreme Court’s Office of the Court Administrator (OCAD).
The amount does not include the cost for building additional courtrooms.
While the OCAD said they were targeting a caseload of 300 per court, Gordon said a 200-per-court maximum caseload would be better.
“Mas maganda kung 200 or 150 caseload lang para mas matuwa ang mga tao dahil mas bibilis ang andar ng mga kaso,” said Gordon.
The Senate justice and human rights committee will hold a public hearing on the proposals on July 25./PN
