Judiciary paralyzed as experts strike
Published Date: March 11, 2010
By Nawara Fattahova, Staff Writer
KUWAIT: More than 10,000 court cases are likely to be suspended in the upcoming days as experts of the Ministry of Justice continue their strike for the third consecutive day. They are demanding the government to approve a new law that offers them a better pay scale. Almost 1,000 cases dealing with financial disputes are reviewed daily, and these are put on hold until about 250 experts at the ministry call off their strike. The job of those experts is to review the legality and competency of cases before t
hey go to court.
The experts involved in the sit-in are affiliated to all the six governorates.Abdulrahman Al-Amira, an expert and member of the Experts Committee, explained the basic demands of the experts and the nature of their work. "Our department is a judicial utility that was neglected by the government. The judges received cadres (financial increases) recently but the experts didn't, although our work is on the same level. Most of the cases are transferred to the experts' department except delinquency and felony c
ases. The experts include engineers and accountants who have to study the cases and give their reports, which are then sent to the judge to make his decision based on these reports," Al-Amira told the Kuwait Times.
All the experts agreed on continuing the strike till March 17, 2010, when a parliament session will discuss the new law. "Since 2005 we have proposed making amendments in the current law that was issued in the 1980s. We sent official letters to the minister of justice at that time, but nothing happened due to the instable political situation and parliamentary dissolutions," he said.
According to Al-Amira, the experts face a host of problems. "Our demands are not just financial. During the last few years, we were harassed by the some parties when they didn't like the reports we made. Many of them say that we are partial and file cases against us, especially in financial disputes when the amounts can reach millions. This is not fair as we don't have judicial immunity like the judges," he explained.
In November, MPs adopted this case and promised to discuss it, but every time it was postponed to another session. It was listed on the agenda of the parliament session held on March 2, but they postponed it to March 17. And if nothing changes on March 17, we will take more serious steps till we receive our fair demands that we deserve," Al-Amira warned.
As reported earlier in a local daily, the experts aim from their strike to put pressure on the Cabinet to meet their demands of enforcing their draft law and urging the parliament to put it for discussion in the March 17 session, warning at the same time from proposing an alternative to the proposed draft law.
Aziz Al-Sayed, an attorney, said that it's unacceptable that the demands of the experts to amend the financial clauses in their law to be ignored for years, given the serious nature of their work, as millions of dinars are on the line in the cases they review. He added that experts wouldn't be able to utilize their full potential under this psychological pressure. Meanwhile, attorneys Turkie Al-Turkie and Adel Al-Turkie announced their support for the experts' cause, reiterating the department's "profound
role in neutrally reviewing cases by which the rights of people are decided
source
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTgxMjAxMzU1
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