Commercial case hearing time cut down by over 50 per cent

High Court Commercial Division Judge Vicent Makaramba shows members of the ICF board of trustees and other guests how a modern equipment records court proceedings electronically on Wednesday. photo | courtesy of icf 

By Ludger Kasumuni

In Summary

• According to her, the bill for the upgrade amounted to Sh2.32 billion ($1.45 million). The project covered the Court of Appeal and the High Court divisions of commerce, lands and labour. ICF gave Sh2.16 billion while the remaining was contributed by the government.

Dar es Salaam. Time spent to complete a case at the Commercial Court has been cut by 51.47 per cent.

This became possible, thanks to the introduction of a new technology that has removed several hurdles in case proceedings.

The ICT equipment project supported by the Investment Climate Facility for Africa (ICF), has modernised the handling of judiciary proceedings, which can now be recorded electronically.

Before the project that commenced in 2008, a total of 680 days were spent on filing a dispute at the court and delivering the final judgement, but these have been cut down to 330 days, according to Ms Eunice Urio, the ICF communications manager.

Ms Urio was responding to a question by The Citizen during discussions on the performance of the commercial court. The ICF board of trustees on Wednesday visited the Dar es Salaam-based court to inspect implementation of the project.

According to her, the bill for the upgrade amounted to Sh2.32 billion ($1.45 million). The project covered the Court of Appeal and the High Court divisions of commerce, lands and labour. ICF gave Sh2.16 billion while the remaining was contributed by the government.

As a result of the ICF support, the Court of Appeal, the High Court and its three divisions of Commercial, Land and Labour were able to record court sessions using modern audio recording systems and provide court proceedings within 24 hours.

The Facility also provided lap tops and desktop computers to staff whereby court documents were produced electronically instead of being handwritten.