Harare (New Ziana) – Plans are at an advanced stage to introduce the Integrated Electronic Case Management System (IECMS) at magistrates courts throughout the country, the Judicial Service
Commission (JSC) has said.
JSC secretary, Walter Chikwanha said they are currently attending to teething problems being experienced at the General Division of the High Court, where the system was introduced in September last year, after which they will move to the magistrates courts.
The JSC has been introducing the IECMS in the country’s courts in phases, starting with the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and Commercial Court, where it was introduced in May 2022.
It then moved to the Labour Court and the Administrative Court, where it introduced the system in February 2023 and gave itself some time to monitor its performance, after which it moved to the General Division of the High Court in September last year.
Chikwanha said the JSC encountered some challenges with IECMS at the General Division of the High Court due to the huge volume of work that it handled.
“We are assuming that by mid-2024 we would have attended to the challenges we faced in the General Division, which is one of the biggest courts in the country, after that we will move to the magistracy, which will be the fourth phase,” he said.
He said the JSC wanted first to perfect the IECMS at the High Court so that when it makes the magistrates courts paperless, it would be aware of the challenges that it might face and be in a position to attend to them quicker.
“As a result, it is difficult to give a time frame of when we will introduce the system there,” he said, adding however that initial plans had been to do so by February this year.
“In our communications with stakeholders, that is the roadmap that we had given, but we have had to revise our timeline as we need to be thorough and apply our implementation tools exhaustively,” Chikwanha said.
The magistrates courts handle 90 percent of litigation in the country and the majority of litigants are impoverished. Chikwanha said technical teams are currently analysing the flow of cases at the magistrates courts as part of the preparations to introduce the IECMS there.
“When we move in, we will be sure of the challenges to expect,” he said.
He said as part of preparations to make the magistracy electronic courts also, the JSC had since established sub-registries at every court house in the country, including in the very remote areas, where it set up e-filing offices manned by qualified officers to assist those litigants that do not have electronic gadgets.
The IECMS involve filing of cases electronically, automatic case allocation to judicial officers, electronic case tracking and management from filling to finalization, and virtual hearings.
Zimbabwe adopted the e-courts system in line with new technologies and the need for efficiency in the delivery of justice and collective efforts by all players in the justice delivery system.
New Ziana
