Justice Sector and the Rule of Law - AfriMAP

controlled by the Treasury. 201 The financial autonomy of the judiciary is one of the factors identifiedby the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper as being a critical element of governance. 202In its strategies for the period from 2003 to 2008, the judiciary plans to secure its financial independenceby, among other things, establishing ‘direct reporting by the chief justice to Parliamentfor all budgetary matters.’ 203 The Malawi Judiciary Development Programme 2003–2008 doesnot elaborate the form that direct reporting by the Chief Justice to Parliament should entail. Itis reasonable to expect that it would include submission to the Budget and Finance Committeeof Parliament, in order to influence the committee as it performs its function of approving thenational budget before it is debated by the full National Assembly. 204 Direct reporting wouldalso probably require the judiciary to submit its expenditure reports directly to the PublicAccounts Committee of Parliament for its scrutiny and approval. 205 The judiciary must, as amatter of urgency, make a submission to the Ministry of Finance and to Parliament, which setsout in detail what specific measures and reforms in the budget formulation and implementationprocess it considers necessary to secure its financial autonomy as envisaged in the MalawiJudiciary Development Programme 2003–2008.According to the Registrar of the High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal, the general effectivenessof administration and management of the judiciary must be strengthened. 206 The MalawiJudiciary Development Plan underscores the weakness of court administration by stating thatthere is little or no administrative support to the judiciary from its lower echelons and that servicedelivery by administrative staff is ‘poor’, due to insufficient training. The major cause for thisis identified as the insufficiency of training of administrative staff. 207 In total the country hasfewer than 2 000 court administrative staff. 208 As indicated earlier, the judiciary acknowledgesthat it has no human resource development plan and, even though the publicly-funded StaffDevelopment Institute offers training to judiciary staff, the training is offered mainly to judicialofficers and not administrative personnel. In any case, training activities tend to be ‘ad hoc anddonor-driven.’ 209 The judiciary plans to address the shortage of trained court administrative personnelbefore 2008 by rationalising the allocation of available personnel to various courts and byimplementing a training strategy and continuing career development for both judicial and court