Pay court services fees through banks -— Justice Dominic Adjei
The Director of the Judicial Training Institute, Mr Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei, has stated that it is a crime for litigants to pay any court official for services rendered.
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He explained that all fees and other monies must be paid to banks attached to the courts.
He said the move was instituted to halt the corrupt practices of some court officials and also save the sinking image of the Judiciary.
Mr Justice Adjei, who is also a Court of Appeal judge, was addressing chief executives of Private Court Process Servers and their staff, as well as some registrars of courts in the Ashanti Region, some parts of the Western and the Brong Ahafo regions.
Twelve years ago, the Judiciary outsourced some aspects of its auxiliary job; the serving of service to some private companies. These private companies are referred to as Private Court Process Servers. They take services from the court and serve the persons involved in litigation.
Mr Justice Adjei, who is also the Chairman of the Association of Judges and Magistrates, explained that the Judicial Service paid the Private Court Process Servers adequate money that covered the work they performed for the Judicial Service.
Judicial staff
According to him, judicial staff who performed other functions which required going out of their office, were also reimbursed.
He said it was, therefore, unlawful for anyone performing judicial duties to ask any litigant to help with transport cost or monies to facilitate their work.
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He revealed how he had to travel to Kumasi recently just to investigate some alleged cases of extortion and reiterated the call by the Chief Justice that the Judiciary would weed out undesirable elements.
No Service
Mr Justice Adjei described as a worrying the incidence where court process servers lied to the court that they had tried on several occasions to serve litigants without success and asked for substituted service.
Other court officials, he said, would also provide evidence that they had indeed served the litigants when in actual fact they had not done it, thereby, misleading the court to also go ahead with the process.
Mr Justice Adjei expressed worry that some bailiffs had changed the legal meaning of personal service and had started leaving court documents with friends and relatives of litigants.
Telephone
He said it was also unacceptable for any process servers company or its staff to call people to come to either their house or office and collect a process served on them.
He said once the law indicated personal service, it should be served on the person and not through telephone calls.