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GenSan officials push for more trial courts

By MindaNews

| March 9, 2015 - 8:25 am

GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/08 March) — In a bid to unclog the dockets of trial courts here, city officials are pushing for the establishment of four more Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) branches in the area.

In an urgent resolution, the city council asked the Supreme Court to recommend to the Senate and the House of Representatives the need for the immediate creation of four additional MTCC salas for the city.

Vice Mayor Shirlyn L. Bañas-Nograles, who authored the resolution, said Monday such move was in response to a request submitted by the incumbent judges of the city’s three existing MTCC branches.

She specifically cited judges Marie Ellengrid Baliguat of MTCC Branch 1, Emilio Quianzon Jr. of MTCC Branch 2 and Alejandro Ramon Alano of MTCC Branch 3,

In a letter to the local government, she said the three judges asked the city to make representations with the Supreme Court, through the Office of the Court Administrator, to pursue a recommendation to Congress for the creation of the additional courts.

The Supreme Court had designated three MTCC branches for the city by virtue of Republic Act 5412 or the City Charter of General Santos City issued on June 15, 1968.[]/a> with |||

Nograles said that no additional MTCC branches in the city were created since 1968.

“For a period of 46 years, the population of the city has increased and its residents have become more litigious and aware of their rights, and have been filing cases in court,” she said.

The vice mayor said the Sangguniang Panlungsod or city council fully supports the position of the city’s three incumbent MTCC judges in terms of the need for the creation of the additional courts.

“Four additional branches of the MTCC should be created to help handle the volume of cases filed in court so that the existing courts will not be burdened or inundated with cases filed by city residents,” she noted.

Aside from the three existing MTCC branches, the city has five Regional Trial Court (RTC) salas.

In 2013, the Supreme Court designated four additional courts — RTC branches 55, 58, 59 and 60 — for the city to augment the operations of the eight existing courts.

The new RTC branches, which were created by virtue of Republic Act 10393, have no appointed judges yet.

The city government approved last month the allocation of around P8 million for the construction of an archive building for the eight trial courts in the area.

The two-storey building will mainly serve as the repository of archived legal documents of local courts, and will be built within a property of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines adjacent to the Hall of Justice compound in Barangay Lagao here. (MindaNews)