November 25, 2006	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 3, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 24: Improved skills of the judiciary in case flow management would help to provide speedy justice to the poor, needy and vulnerable, said Mohammad Afzal Kahut, programme director of the Access to Justice Programme (AJP), a project of the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights.

Mr Kahut was addressing the inaugural session of a training workshop on case flow management, arranged by the AJP at the Federal Judicial Academy here on Friday.

Participants of the workshop included district, sessions and civil judges from all over the country.

He said that the huge burden of pendency of cases continued to add to the challenge that the courts were facing to discharge their duties in time and efficient manner.

Some of the pending court cases are more than 10 to 15 years old and this situation obviously highlighted the importance of having better case flow management, he opined.

While describing the pendency in courts, Mr Kahut noted that only in Punjab, in 2001, the number of indisposed cases was reported to be more than a million, and in the same year Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan had 119,969; 159,074 and 6,029 cases pending in the courts respectively.

It was this very concern of the years-long pendency in our courts that provided a rationale for launching the AJP, he mentioned adding, the delay reduction had been a major focus of the AJP since its inception about five years back.

The extremely poor ratio of judges per population, which was one judge for every 140,000 persons in Pakistan, was one of the main reasons for pendency of cases, he said adding that most of the existing vacancies of judges have been filled in under the AJP and new vacancies were being created.

Mr Kahut said a number of measures have been taken to strengthen the judiciary by providing better infrastructure, latest gadgets and international standard contemporary skills. He urged the judicial officers to remain committed and work hard.

Moazzam Hayat, director general Federal Judicial Academy, also spoke on the occasion and assured the AJP of his continued support.