Chief justice needs R90m

THE office of Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng is facing a funding shortfall of R90-million between now and 2016 and has asked parliament to increase its operating budget.

The chief financial officer in the office of Mogoeng, Cassie Coetzer, said they needed R6.5-million to rent more office space, R15-million to conduct judicial training for officials, and a further R20-million per year to cover staff salaries.

They also needed R15-million to develop a judicial monitoring system to assess the performance of the courts while another R1.5-million was needed to buy office furniture.

Coetzer said although the 2014/15 budget was inflation-based, it had not considered the expanded mandate of the office of the chief justice and the resources required for the execution of that task.

He said instead of allocating them more money, the national Treasury had advised the office to first sort out the transfer of delegations from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development before they could be allocated more money. The secretary-general in the office of Mogoeng, Memme Sejosengwe, said they would ultimately have a separate budget from that of the Justice Department once their transitional arrangements were dealt with. "Currently the office of the chief justice is subject to the 2014/15 annual performance plan of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development," Sejosengwe said.

The office of the chief justice was proclaimed in 2010 and is meant to support the chief justice in his dual roles as the head of the judiciary and the Constitutional Court.

Although it has the status of a national department, it is still technically a sub-programme of the Justice Department.

But ACDP MP Steve Swart said it was not desirable that the office of the chief justice be turned into a government department and it should instead be modelled as an independent state office like the offices of the public protector and the auditor-general.

The DA's James Selfe decried the fact that more money was spent to provide research and other support to judges of the Constitutional Court than those of the Supreme Court of Appeal.

"On average we spend about R12.2- million a year on the Constitutional Court per justice and R1.3-million per Supreme Court of Appeal judge," Selfe said. - Quinton Mtyala