PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Yahya Afridi on Friday directed the district and sessions judges in the province not to participate in functions where political elites are invited by the bar, and ensure the transparent and merit-based appointment of support staff members.

He issued the directions while chairing the first-ever district and sessions judges conference here. The event was organised here as part of structural reforms for and scaling up of service delivery at district courts.

The participants examined seven thematic areas, included capacity enhancement, bet-ter coordination, use of technology and formation of secretariat for district judiciary, and made policy recommendations.

The CJ highlighted major initiatives being implemented for judicial reforms at district level and said the secretariat of the district judiciary, which was in the design phase, would be ready in coming Sept.

`The secretariat will facilitate working as well as improve response time of district judiciary requirements.

He said the overseas exposure and foreign training was a permanent feature of the initiative. The CJ said 11 judicial officers would go to the UK on April 30 and six women judicial officers would follow them in Sep and Oct.

He said the far-flung districts and higher rate of case disposal would remain the criteria for the selection of officers for overseas training.

The CJ said the UN agencies and multilateral donor institutions appreciated the project and were willing to offer technical and financial support for the high court vision ofstructural reforms.

He said the construction of sheds for litigants, premises solorisation and installation of water filtration plants at the secretariat had been suggested to donors for funding.

The CJ said a mega computerisation and digitisation project would soon be rolled out to improve the use of IT as a tool for decisionmaking and thus, increasing the case flow management.

`The KP Public Service Commission has been requested to recruit 32 civil judges and judicial magistrates to ease workload in the districts with high pendency,` he said.

The CJ said against a total portfolio of 36 projects, six were due for completion but efforts were under way to complete nine of the 10 projects to create more space for new projects next year.

He added that the provincial government had agreed to provide an additional allocation of Rs650 million to help the high court fast track projects. The CJ said the high court was considering constructing five judicialcomplexes in different areas of the province.

`Priority is given to the areas, which are far-flung and lack reasonable infrastructure,` he said.

The CJ said human resource evaluation in the district hadn`t been done on merit by the district judges, which had prompted him to give the task to the high court judges.

He urged district judges to be more focuse d andfairinevaluatingofñcersintheirrespective jurisdictions.

The CJ also directed district judges to be equitable and fair in distributing workload among their subordinate judges. There followed interactive sessions, where districts judges talked about the challenges and issues facing them.

The CJ ordered the immediate action on some of their grievances.

He also said Chitral, Tank and Upper Dir courts would be the first in the province to be solarised as the development of the judiciary in the far-flung districts were the high court`s top priority.