Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Chief Justice David Maraga yesterday eclared that he will serve his full term, ending speculation that he was considering early retirement.

The Supreme Court President who is due to retire early next year after attaining the age of 70 years said he will remain in office until November when he will proceed on terminal leave pending retirement.

“Quite a number of you have talked about my age and you know what that means.

Even the LSK president was talking like he was bidding me farewell. I am still around and we have quite a number of things to do,” he said.

Maraga spoke while launching the Electronic Filing system for courts in Nairobi, which was funded by the International Development Law Organisation.

Terminal leave

Said he: “A retiring judge takes terminal leave so when my time comes I will receive a letter from Chief Registrar of the Judiciary asking me to take terminal leave.

I believe that will be somewhere in November so I am still around, don’t worry we are going to meet in a number of functions.”

Maraga also asked the National Assembly to approve a reasonable Judiciary budget, cautioning that the continued slashing of their budget had drastically affected their operations.

“I am sure some of our MPs must be listening to me. What the Judiciary requires is some reasonable funds to be able to run its operations,” he said.

He added: “If we cannot get funding I am sorry to tell you this project will fall in another one or two years.

When I say this some people and the media say the CJ is crying for this and that. I will continue crying for the Kenyan people,” he said.

Maraga noted that the Judiciary allocation was barely one percent of the country’s budget. According to Maraga, cuts to the Judiciary budget last year drastically altered their operations.

 “I asked the Chief Registrar to tell the Treasury that, look, you can hold the salaries and remit it to us monthly but the development funding give it us upfront so that we are able to plan…

In November last year we were at the final stages of completing procurement for servers that we so badly need just before we issued the tenders we had a budget cut,” he stated.

Speaking at the function, Law Society of Kenya President Nelson Havi called on President Uhuru Kenyatta to ensure the Judiciary was properly funded.

Havi, requested that a Bill be put in place to support the filing of cases online to shield the digital courts from abuse.

“Judges have been subject to abuse through social media and soon doctored judgments might appear in social media,” he noted.

A total of 170 advocates have so far filed their cases via the e-filing portal. Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji said digitisation of the court system will lead to reduced corruption and enhance transparency.