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The Chief Justice, Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, has descended on members of the Judiciary promising to crack the whip on those who demand money to facilitate bail processes.

She insists the ‘granting of bail is free.’

The move is among measures being implemented by the Chief Justice to repair the apparently dented image of the judiciary after the recent Afro-barometer report ranked it as one of the most corrupt public institutions in the country.

In a message read on her behalf by Justice Dennis Adjei, Justice of the Court of Appeal, at the commissioning of the first ever Sanitation Court in Kumasi, she insisted that the granting of bail should not be used as a gold mine to enrich individual pockets.

Beyond the sanitation issues, the court is to exercise jurisdiction as any other court including civil, criminal, tribunal and juvenile courts.

The establishment of the court by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) at Asokwa, a suburb of Kumasi, and handed over to the Judicial Service increases the Districts Courts to four in Kumasi. The Chief Justice is meanwhile appealing to the KMA to ensure that the every sub-Metro has a court attached to it.

She suggested that the establishment of more courts especially in areas such as Tafo, Kwadaso, Santase will make justice easily accessible to the people.

The two-room court is expected to be expanded to four by the close of the year to ease the pressure from other districts especially AshTown.

The facility which is currently housing the Askowa Sub-Metro is to have jurisdiction on cases which do not exceed Gh¢20,000.

Justice Wood appealed to lawyers in Ashanti region as per a consensus reached at a recent meeting, for each lawyer to handle at least a case on a pro-bono basis to assist the deprived.  

The court would begin sitting on sanitation cases after Saturday’s National Sanitation Day Exercise.