04 January 2004	Sunday	11 Ziqa'ad 1424

PESHAWAR, Jan 3: Participants of a one-day consultative workshop observed here on Saturday that the Asian Development Bank-funded Access to Justice Programme(AJP) has not been effectively executed so far and the judicial , legal and police reforms have not been fully implemented yet.

Entitled "Access to Justice Programme," the workshop was organized by the Aurat Foundation and the Asian Development Bank. It was attended by lawyers, judges, councillors and members of non-governmental organizations.

Speaking on the occasion, Said Rehman Khan, a former president of the Peshawar Bar Association and member the NWFP Bar Council, said that the loans of the foreign banks were not utilized properly on litigants.

Mr Rehman said that under the AJP, Asian Development Bank had granted loans to the government agencies for legal empowerment but they were not properly utilized. He demanded improvement in legal and social services to the litigants especially the women who come to seek justice in courts.

"The funds are misappropriated rather than providing legal aid to the litigants or providing social services to the litigants in the courts," he observed.

"The Judicial Complex here lacks facilities for the litigants. There is no washroom for women and no water at all and in such a situation, where even such basic facilities are not provided how can one think of easy access to justice of the common man," Mr Rehman observed.

The speakers criticised the role of the police, especially women police station. "The women police station, housed in the Police Lines, is itself inaccessible for women and not a single FIR has been registered with it for the last seven years. How can one expect women in such a situation to have been provided access to justice," Ms Shahida, one of the participants of the workshop asked.

Peshawar District and Sessions Judge Hayat Ali Shah said that they had been planning to establish waiting rooms and wash rooms for female litigants in the courts but as most of the space in the judicial complex and other courts had been occupied by offices of lawyers, the litigants could not be provided such facilities.

He said that for the sake of women litigants six women civil judges had been appointed and two of them were specifically dealing with family cases.

Sher Afghan, a member of the NWFP Bar Council, said there should be transparency in disbursement and utility of the foreign loans and demanded that they should be used in those areas which actually would bring a change in the life of the common man.

"There is no facility of free legal aid especially at the district level. The number of male and female judges in district courts should be increased," he said.

"Justice is being buried, not done and cases are being decided hastily in courts," Mr Afgan said, adding "the AJP is a fund-oriented programme but it should be kept in mind that judiciary is not a multi-national company. No amendments were proposed in the Criminal Procedure Court (CRPC) under this programme which could really benefit the litigants."

The Superintendent of Police (Cant), Mohammad Idris, said that 337 policemen were killed during duty last year and 600 received severe injuries. He said the police department had demanded Rs96 billion for the implementation of the police reforms but they had only been allocated Rs2 billion and even that amount had not bee released.

"That is the reason why the police order is not implemented. The constraints faced by police should also be kept in mind as there are only 3200 policemen in Peshawar for a population of about three million," he observed.