By BEVERLY C. PAOYON
ALABEL, Sarangani (January 29, 2012) – The Justice Enhancement and Empowerment Program (JEEP) that earned Sarangani the Galing Pook Award in 2011 facilitated its judiciary to speed up resolution of cases of poor litigants serving longer years in jail than they should.
The P7.8 million newly-constructed Regional Trial Court building to house two salas that Governor Migs Dominguez will turn over on Wednesday (January 30) to Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno is yet the “penultimate objective of JEEP,” provincial legal officer Arnel Zapatos said.
“Anything that comes upon after because of JEEP has the purpose of de-clogging our courts and reducing the number of inmates,” said Atty. Zapatos.
Other than turning much faster the wheels of justice in Sarangani, the new RTC branches 47 and 48 are also deemed to lessen the congestion of provincial jail inmates whose cases could not be heard or are serving longer terms than what was sentenced due to a common predicament of “access to justice.”
Having noted their plight, the governor supported the provincial legal office to adapt the Supreme Court’s JEEP and implement it locally staring 2006. JEEP backed the establishment of the provincial mediation center, alternative dispute resolution, the strengthening of community conflict resolutions, creation of new RTC and ran its own locally-funded Justice on Wheels (JOWs) mobile court.
As of 2011, JOWs acted on 2,337 from out of almost 3,000 cases pending in the lone RTC branch 38. Only at least 705 cases were left unresolved presently. Within two years, JOWs resolved the cases of half of the 600 inmates congesting the provincial jail.
“This is because of the intervention of our justice system,” Zapatos said. (Beverly C. Paoyon/ SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)
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