Residents of Kimilili town and its outskirts had a rare opportunity of interacting with the judiciary staff as well as officers from other related institutions such as police, prisons and probation who had a chance to answer queries raised by them that had been deemed a hindrance to accessing better services.
Kimilili senior resident magistrate Dickens Onyango said the annual exercise is meant to give an opportunity to members of the public to freely interact with the judiciary officers as well as other departments so as to understand how they carry out their services and their queries be addressed.
He disclosed that Kimilili is the first station to hold the function this year in the entire Western region and was impressed by the turn out of the residents saying the main challenge they are facing is still backload of cases as there are only two magistrates at the station.
“Another issue is non digitization of files as in the court room, as magistrates we have to write manually the accounts of the plaintiff and defendants and sometimes the files may end up getting lost hence proves to be a challenge,” he said
However he expressed optimism that with the digitazation process having started from Nairobi will soon roll down up to the grass root level to ease the work in the judiciary saying they will have an opportunity of easy access to files and other schemes of work.
He further disclosed that the region is notorious for defilement cases and urged the members of the civil society to work together with members of the public to help reduce such cases saying the law will always take its course for those found guilty of such offences.
On his Part Patrice Chenge a member of the court users association in Kimilili said the judiciary open day gave an opportunity for the public to have their issues addressed saying some residents had been victims of brokers who took advantage of their ignorance to promise that they will help them and ended up swindling their money.
He called upon members of the public to be visiting the courts in case of any issues affecting them saying they will have an opportunity to be assisted rather than consulting brokers who are only after making money.
“For those who were not well served may have an opportunity of filling a dialogue card and put in the dialogue box that will be later opened by the court users and other stakeholders and have the queries addressed by the relevant departments,” he said
Mr. Chenge further called upon the County government and the ministry of lands to move with speed to allocate land to build courts in Kapsokwony saying the judiciary is willing to release funds to build the court and they are only waiting to be shown land.
Jackton Okode a resident from Kimilili said they benefited a lot during the open day because they had an opportunity of interacting with the magistrate and officers from other departments.
