TACLOBAN CITY - Two additional court salas here are expected to operate soon after three House Bills were approved by the committee on justice at the Lower House where Rep. Remedios L. Petilla is a member, creating additional trial courts branches in some parts of the country including Leyte.
Petilla told Leyte Samar Daily Express that the three approved House bills numbers are 462, 3516 and 4739 in which the committee is chaired by Rep. Simeon Datumanong (2nd Dist. Maguindanao) who is also an author of the house bills. Other members of the committee and authors of the house bill are Rep. Remedios Petilla, 1st Dist., Leyte and Erwin Chiongbian, Lone District of Sarangani.
According to Petilla, she asked for two more court salas in the 8th Judicial region in Eastern Visayas, particularly for this city on top of five branches covering Leyte’s first district.
Petilla told LSDE that Rep. Chiongbian asked for two more regional trial courts (RTC) for Sarangani province because the existing RTC is overloaded with cases, while Rep. Datumanong asked for one RTC branch in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao and two Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) in Cotabato City because the present RTC branches there has a combined backlog of 2,000 cases.
When asked of his opinion as a practicing lawyer, Board Member Carlo Loreto (5th Dist.) said the laudable effort of the committee on justice at the Lower House is in fact a good move saying that with the creation of additional trial courts salas, particularly in Leyte will declog cases from the existing courts.
Another good thing about this, Loreto said, is that trial of cases would now be faster and that justice will be delivered especially to the aggrieve party. In some places where there is poor court services in terms of hearing and deciding cases due to overloading, some persons or party would resort to putting the law into their own hands instead of filing cases in court.
A court should also look respectable or with authority being a hall of justice, he said.
Loreto cited as an example a court in Hilongos, Leyte where at a glance one would think it is not a trial court because it is only a small classroom that was converted into a court which structure is dilapidated.
