Cape Town - In a bid to clear the court case backlog and ensure faster finalisation of cases, the Chief Justice has established a coordinating committee to deal with case flow management.
The announcement was made on Tuesday by Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Jeff Radebe ahead of his Budget Vote in Parliament.
He said the move would "assist in ensuring greater interaction between the Criminal Justice System role players and the judiciary."
The minister said that between April last year and March, the 56 Regional Court backlog disposed of 8 111 cases, with nearly 5 272 being finalised, 2 444 were withdrawn and 395 transferred.
In the same period, District Courts disposed of 8 915 cases, 5 813 were finalised, 2 943 were withdrawn and 159 transferred.
Radebe said that between November 2006 and March 2011, over 46 000 cases were dealt with by the "backlog courts."
"Many of these cases would still have been on the rolls if it were not for the hard work performed by the officials in the additional backlog courts.
"The total number of cases disposed of from the Regional and District Court rolls, including the outputs of these backlog courts since 1 April 2010 until the end of March 2011, was a total of 17 026."
He said the Lower Courts and the High Courts were able to dispose of more cases than the total number of new cases enrolled.
For the 2011/12 financial year, a budget of R13.518 billion had been allocated to the department.
Of that, Radebe said R4.342 billion would be earmarked for the Court Services programme, R2.640 billion for the National Prosecuting Authority and R1.656 billion for Public Entities and chapter nine institutions.
In line with government's commitment to job creation this year, he said R450 million would be apportioned to filling up 200 new positions at the courts, while R29 million would be set aside for 90 new positions in the Director General's office.
The minister said a further R13 million would be used to meet the appointment of 65 additional maintenance investigators, R23 million for the appointment of 130 intermediaries and R17.4 million would cater for the Children's Court clerks.
He added that R12 million would be used for 111 new posts of Children Justice Court clerks, while R40 million was meant for Legal Aid South Africa candidate attorneys.
