The Federal Judicial Academy (FJA) has arranged a number of courses from July 2009 to June 2010 to train as many as 500 judicial officers including 40 Judges of the High Courts. Director General Federal Judicial Academy Moazzam Hayat here on Thursday told APP in an interview that under the year calendar plan a total of 24 courses would be arranged.
Which would benefit 40 judges of the High Courts, 345 judicial officers, 70 law officers and 45 other court personnel. He said the Academy has resolved to put on board all the target groups mentioned in 1997 Act for their training/education programmes in the upcoming financial/academic year 2009-10.
"It is expected that out of two thousand judges and magistrates, 20 percent will be attending different courses," he added. DG informed that these training programmes would be funded under the "Capacity building of the Federal Judicial Academy" project for which funds have been provided by the Access to Justice Programme.
He said mostly the programmes would be of short duration (two or three days) for the reasons that the High Courts could feel comfortable while relieving their officers to attend the training away from their court rooms.
The comprehensive training and education programme for all the four subjects of the Academy (judges, magistrates, law officers and court personnel) would achieve the target of training human resources attached with justice system on the basis of training needs assessment so that the quality of justice administered should be improved, he added.
To a question he replied under the National Judicial Policy guidelines laid down by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry who is also Chairman Board of Governors FJA, the Academy was striving to achieve both main goals of speedy dispensation and inexpensive justice to litigants at all levels.
He said basic aim of the training courses was to make the newly appointed judges functional and to remove their problems by inculcating a spirit to expedite the process of speedy dispensation of justice. Besides, the in-service judicial officers would also get training in the use of modern modes of techniques like computers and other gadgets, he added.
Moazzam said the training imparted to judicial officers would surely enhance their capacity to improve their functioning with ultimate end to providing relief to litigants. In recent past certain training programmes in collaboration with USAID, IOM and others were successfully arranged, he added.
The upcoming judicial courses would include topics like judicial accountability, women related issues, role of law officers, effective superintendent, skill based ADR training, orientation of new laws, effective financial management, appreciation of evidence, review of NJP implementation with reference to problems faced by courts, gender sensitisation, role of law officer, orientation of judges of Labour courts and NIRC, management of civil and family cases, emerging issues in justice system etc.