Prosecution’s 35,000 cases cleared in 8 years

The National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) has cleared its huge case backlog – of over 35,000 – since the 2004 judicial reforms started. This was one of the highlights made at Lemigo Hotel on Monday morning in a meeting by top NPPA officials. During the meeting, journalists were briefed on progress made in two critical areas –solving pending cases, and action on audit reports by the Office of the Auditor General about public finances. Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga admitted that the issue of backlog of cases had dogged the sector ever since reforms started years back but huge improvements have been made.Ngoga said: “When there are many pending cases, it implies that the justice system has no capacity to clear new cases as fast as possible as required by international principles of justice. It is said that justice delayed is justice denied. We still have this problem, in general, but at the side of prosecution, we have made effort to solve it.” Ngoga said the backlog is now cleared and there is commitment by prosecutors to ensure no more backlogs as mechanisms were put in place to guarantee that any dossier received by prosecution is worked on and finalised within one month. “It is unacceptable for people to wait for justice for three years! All effort must be made to ensure that cases are closed fast, be it in the prosecution or in the judiciary,” he said.Speaking at the event, the inspector of prosecution, Denis Kariwabo highlighted performance contracts, review of the law governing prosecution and support from various groups among the contributors to the reduction of case backlog. The revised law enabled the hiring of an ad hoc team of 20 prosecutors last December to backup the prosecution team. According to Kariwabo, the team has been able to handle very many cases. Kariwabo said team work and setting performance targets would ensure that cases do not pile up again.“When we started working basing on Imihigo in 2009, the NPPA vowed to dispose of 90 per cent of new cases. In the year 2012 to 2013, the NPPA vowed to dispose of all newly received case dossiers by a 100 per cent,” Kariwabo said.“The aim in these performance contracts is that by end of every year, every case must be concluded,” Kariwabo added, stressing that quality will not be compromised in the process.Ngoga also said that in the past cases, the NPPA as well gave due attention to the issue of quality. “We looked, in general, at the improvement of dossiers from Prosecution. It was evident that the quality graph improved from year to year, based on issues including the: experience people got; directives given; improvements in qualifications and other reasons,” he added.Action on OAG report Come Harindintwari, a Prosecutor, told the meeting that the first four OAG reports, from 2007 to 2010, were all thoroughly examined by prosecutors. Harindintwari said in total, 410 cases were investigated in the four reports. He said 186 people were fined Rwf85.8 million, all together, while 235 people returned revenues lost and other funds totalling Rwf101, 911, 401. Over Rwf187.7 million was recovered by prosecutors from 2007 to 2010. Agaciro Meanwhile, during the same meeting Ngoga presented the NPPA’s total contribution of Rwf100 million to the Agaciro Development Fund, to Elias Bayingana, the Director General of National Budget in the Ministry of Finance.The fund is an initiative set up to raise funds domestically to accelerate economic development.