Attorney General expands access to justice with 15 new county offices

Chris Mahandara-KNA

The Office of the Attorney General is decentralizing services to the counties to enhance access to justice and service delivery.

Attorney General Dorcas Oduor said the exercise which kicked off in January has seen 15 new offices opened outside Nairobi, bringing to a total of 27 offices in the counties.

Two additional offices, she said, were being opened in Siaya and Homa Bay with the exercise which targets having at least one office in every county expected to be scaled up during the next financial year.

Speaking in Kisumu during the commissioning of the Regional Documentation Resource Centre, the AG said the target is to decentralize nine key functions to the counties to enhance efficiency in service delivery.

The services among them Civil Litigation, Department of Justice, Marriage Registration, Public Trustee, National Legal Aid Service (NLAS) and Power of Mercy Advisory Committee (POMAC) will now be available in the counties to save Kenyans time and money spent seeking the services in the regional offices and Nairobi.

 For the first time, she said, the Power of Mercy Advisory Committee, which is based in her offices in Nairobi, is being decentralised to assist prisoners who have served for long.

"This move is in line with the constitution and the President's directive to bring services closer to the people," she said.

 The Office of the Attorney General, she added, was committed to the exercise urging officers deployed to the county offices to take advantage of the enhanced capacity to significantly reduce the backlog of cases to foster greater public trust in the justice system.

"As we continue with the decentralization, we expect that counties that have not been reached will be incubated in the nearest county offices until we physically separate," she said.

The regional documentation resource centre, she said, is critical to service delivery at the AG's office, asking staff working at the various departments to make use of it to enhance efficiency and service delivery.

"We handle very sensitive information relating to marriages, property administration and even virtual documentation used as exhibits in court which must be kept in a manner that it can be retrieved," she said.

Plans, she added, were under way to digitise the information to guarantee accurate and timely access to enhance service delivery.