Appointment of IC judges by President shrinks public confidence - Registrar
Sharon Mathala | Wednesday May 27, 2015 17:03
Makgabenyana accepted that this would help improve the public’s perception of the Industrial court and bolster its confidence in it. He said this yesterday when briefing the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
“The appointment of the Industrial Justices is done by the president, he is advised by the judicial Services Commission,” he said.
The PAC also heard that although the Judicial Services commission may advice the president on who to appoint, the president is not bound to accept its recommendation.
“The president is not bound to accept the recommendation of the appointment of the Justices from the judicial system Commission.” Said Makgabenyana.
The registrar also said that another challenge the court faced was that of case backlog. However he clarified the problem was only because of the high retrenchment cases that followed the recession.
“In 2008 we had a lot of cases due to the recession that hit the country, and because we had only about nine judges the process was delayed, but this is all in the past, we are currently handling cases for 2013 and 2015, I trust that by the end of this year we will have recovered,” said Makgabenyana who stressed their mandate was to settle trade disputes speedily and fairly.
Makgabenyana also accepted Selibe-Phikwe West MP, Dithapelo Keorapetse’s plea for his department to consider setting up labour court, which would solely deal with labour issues, as this would help lessen the burden on the Industrial court.
Makgabenyana also said they were in the process of setting up courts in Tsabong, Gantsi, Maun and Phikwe. rs Union was the one, which negotiated the deal.
“We settled for the salary structures after bench marking from Commonwealth and other countries. That was when we settled for the 35% for our members. At BURS we went to benchmark from other countries like South Africa and Rwanda. We are