The Judicial Yuan yesterday said it has proposed amendments to the Court Organization Act (法院組織法) and other laws in a bid to hire more judicial staff and tackle the issue of overwork.
Case numbers have risen significantly in the past few years, which has led to judges, clerks and other staff being overworked, the Judicial Yuan said.
A judge fell to his death from a building, a judge fell into a coma in his office and a clerk passed away from illness, it said, citing what it called cases linked to overwork.
Photo: Yang Kuo-wen, Taipei Times
To meet its personnel needs and process outstanding cases, 5,536 new staff would need to be hired, it said.
“We hope the Executive Yuan’s Directorate-General of Personnel Administration can recognize the urgent need for additional judiciary staff,” it said, adding that it hoped the Act Governing the Total Number of Personnel Headcounts of Central Government Agencies (行政院人事行政總處) could be amended to allow more hiring.
A Judicial Yuan report said that the number of annual cases received by local courts over the past decade grew by 28 percent from 2.84 million in 2014 to 3.63 million last year.
The number of open cases also rose, increasing from 187,635 in 2014 to 367,171 last year, or 96 percent, the report said.
Although measures have been implemented to reduce the burden on the court system, it was still unable to keep up with the growth in case numbers, it said.
The law stipulates that the Judicial Yuan and its agencies combined are allowed a maximum of 15,000 staff members.
The agencies budgeted for 14,508 staff members this year, but an additional 5,536 would be needed to clear open cases, the Judicial Yuan said.
The Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee yesterday met with Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Wu San-lung (吳三龍) and cross-party legislators.
The committee asked Wu to prepare a report on how the burden on the court system could be reduced through “administrative simplification, litigation reduction and the application of technology.”
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus secretary-general Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) echoed calls for an increase in judicial hirings, and called for better treatment of judicial personnel and the implementation of a dispute pyramid, which would see more issues settled outside of court.
DPP Legislator Chen Chun-yu (陳俊宇) asked Wu what a reasonable caseload would be for the judiciary.
Wu said that he would discuss the issue with judicial staff.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) also called for increased hiring of judicial staff and said he had drafted an amendment on the issue.
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said that the Judges’ Association of the Republic of China had already issued a statement asking the Judicial Yuan to tackle the staff shortage issue and to respond to it with a proposal within one month.
Wu said he would do his best to respond to the association within that time.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS