By Dumisani Ndlovu
The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has introduced and integrated electronic platform in the Midlands province, to connect all institutions in the justice delivery system, a development that will render all courts paperless and fully automated Kwedu News has learnt.
Addressing Midlands lawyers at the Integrated Electronic Case Management System (IECMS) introductory meeting, Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission Mr Walter Chikwana, urged all legal practitioners to be electronically registered.
The Integrated Electronic Case management system (IECMS) is a web system that automates and tracks all aspects of a case life cycle.
“We are done with phase one, we appreciate those of you who are interacting with Constitutional Court, Supreme court and the commercial division of High Court that we have already digitised in phase 1. And those courts are now paperless. If you are interacting with those courts from the 1st of May last year, up to now, you are doing so electronically. Most of their hearings are being done virtually. That was digitalising done in phase one.
Emphasising on the need for legal practitioners and their law firms to register with the IECMS,” he said
“Now we are in phase 2 where we digitalise labour and administrative courts. So we felt it is important as a profession that we come to you and advise you of this new development as new charters, as Masvingo Charter, Midlands Charter and so forth.
Deputy head Digital courts, Shamiso Muserere, said the Labour and Administrative Courts, which she said will with effect from February 2023 use IECMS to capture the cases’ initial filing through deposition and appeal, will see the judiciary Service Commission training all the partners and make them geared to embrace the development.
“ If a law firm or a lawyer doesn’t have IECMS account you get in-touch with the Law Society of Zimbabwe who then send to us your details and we create an account for you. ”
She highlighted that for the training for IECMS they have two environments.
“We have an environment we call the training environment which is just a replica of the live environment. The live environment is the one that you use to file your cases. We also have a training environment which you can make use of, for you to just practise filing,” said Muserere.
Mrs Kudzai Maronga-Mumbengegwi firmly advised all legal practitioners and their administration staff to attend IECMS trainings, in order to be kept abreast with the new developments.
All players in the justice system including judges and magistrates and court staff and the JSC itself, legal practitioners, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Office of the Attorney-General, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, the Zimbabwe Republic Police, and the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service in Midlands and other provinces are set to received training from the JSC ICT team.
E-courts came into being in line with new technologies and the need for efficiency in the delivery of justice with consistency and collective effort by all justice delivery players through Statutory Instrument (SI) 78, 79, and 80 of 2022 published in the Government Gazette.
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