Last week saw the launch of what has been termed E-Judiciary. What this means is that the Judiciary is being modernized and becoming IT-savvy. All this is fi ne except that justice, which is a fundamental right for every citizen to resort to for the resolution of disputes, runs the danger of pricing itself out of the range of the large majority of Mauritians.

The rationale of Arbitration which is a form of private justice which is paid for by those who turn to it to solve their disputes should not set an example for the regular administration of justice which is a service provided by the State.

Such a service cannot and should not be run along profit lines or along a system which must guarantee a return on investment. At the launch ceremony, a lot of praise was heaped on the Board of Investment (BOI). One wonders what the BOI has to do with what goes on in the Courts of Justice unless the BOI was the instrument which obtained from the private sector the funding which was required for E-Judiciary. The Investment Climate for Africa, which funded 75% of the cost of the website, wanted access to justice to be almost free for the user. In fact, the donor was behind the decision to allow access free of charge to the online service – which was payable before – to any person wishing to use the Supreme Court library.

The donor would be surprised if they learnt that the E-Judiciary may be a source for generating Government revenue by getting litigants to pay high access fees and costs.

The problems of E-Judiciary are many but one stands out. If access to justice means anything, it means that anyone who is prepared to pay a reasonable amount can seek the intervention of State-funded justice. The E-Judiciary which is still ‘en rodage’ has already jacked up the costs of fi ling a case by at least 100%. Surely those who were behind the funding did not intend to have a system which would deter ordinary citizens from having easy access to justice.

If the doubling of the initial cost was all that was involved in terms of costs, one would still be prepared to overlook it. But each time a litigant seeks access to the E-Judiciary system, an amount has to be paid This can result in an inordinate amount which the litigant will have to find the means to keep paying if he wants his day in court. If the litigant cannot keep up with the funding, the system keeps the litigant out of court. That cannot be right and it must be revisited. It is wrong to assume that all litigants are corporations with very deep pockets or rich individuals.

Justice must be accessed by all, irrespective of means. The administration of justice cannot and should not, through the instrumentality of Rules enacted by the Judiciary, deny ordinary litigants the opportunity to knock at its doors.

While no one is against the modernisation of any State service, one expects the savings from an IT system to trickle down to the ordinary user of the service. Justice must be reasonably affordable and there is a serious risk that the IT system of the Judiciary turns out to be a mechanism that throws out litigants by uncontrollable costs. The costs must either be scrapped or capped.