BARCLAYVILLE, Grand Kru County – The Grand Kru County branch of Temple of Justice is in a jostle for an ‘unrestricted use’ of the County’s Administrative Building currently under the power of the County’s Authority headed by the Superintendent.
The County’s Magistrate operates from the Administrative Building, based in the County’s capital, Barclayville, where it occupies two spaces (rooms)
But there is a problem of unhindered use of the Administrative Building by the Magisterial Court.
“We can’t carrying out our judicial function or obligation in the Building when the County’s Authority has a major program at the same place,” Mr. Jerome Sika, Associate Magistrate of the Barclayville City Court, complained to this writer and another journalist in the County during the celebration of the World Press Freedom Day in Grand Kru County, which ran from the first to the second day of May, 2021. The celebration was under the auspices of the Press Union of Liberia.
Mr. Sika repeated the same complaint to this writer during a telephone conversation on May 19, for clarification of his assertion in Grand Kru County.
He said the County’s Authority often officially informs the Courts ahead of its planned meeting. “The County’s leadership has more power than the Barclayville’s Magisterial Court has, so there’s nothing the Court can do, even though the County leadership’s program causes disruption of the Court’s judicial obligation set for the same day,” Mr. Sika said in the telephone conversation with this writer in Monrovia.
The Barclayville City Court has been in the County’s Administrative Building over ten years, Associate Magistrate disclosed during the telephone interview. “The Court was in somebody’s private house, rented by the Government, until Madam Rosaline Segbe Tonne Sneh, the County’s Superintendent during that time, brought it in the County’s Administrative Building,” Mr. Sika reported.
Responding to Associate Magistrate Sika’s assertion, Grand Kru County’s Superintendent, Madam Doris N. Ylatun, told this writer on May 19 that the two spaces being occupied by the Barclayville Magistrate are spacious enough for the Court to carrying out any of its judicial obligations, even when the County’s Authority is having a major serious official County-related program in the same place.
“My leadership’s informing the Barclayville Magisterial Court about a meeting doesn’t mean the Court shouldn’t do its constitutional job on the day the County’s program is going on in the Administrative Building,” Superintendent Ylatun said to this writer on May 19.
“Sometime my office is used as a meeting venue,” she added.
She also said all other Government’s Line Ministries have respective offices in the building
Another issue raised by Associate Magistrate Jerome Skia, during his telephone conversation, with this writer, is lack of general prison center in the entire Grand Kru County.
“At the time we are talking, the Court has hard-core criminals, including those arrested on burglary, being held in temporary custody at the County’s only Police Station, but no prison center in the County to transfer them,” he said.
However, he expressed his personal pessimism about maximum protection of Grand Kruans, hard-core criminals, in a Maryland County’s Prison Center at a time there is a lingering land-related conflict between Grand Kru and Maryland.
“The boundary-land dispute between Maryland County and Grand creates a greater threat to the lives of Grand Kru’s criminals in Maryland”
The place in contention is between a Town named Behwen (of Grand Kru County) and another named Wlowien (of Maryland County)
The issue of lack of Prison Center in Grand Kru County was highlighted by the Commander of the County’s only Police Station during interview by a reporting team of Press Union of Liberia’s members on a Field Trip in Grand Grand Kru County as part of 2018’s World Press Freedom Day celebration in Maryland County—Grand Kru County’s closet sister southeastern region. This writer was a member of the team.
“The County doesn’t have a Prison Center, small-crime and big-crime persons are kept in the only cell here,” the Station’s Commander said to the group of journalist, before leading the press people to a tiny cell—the only, for males—with more than seven inmates.
Most Grand Kruans link their County’s judicial issues, as well as other development-impeding problems, to the remoteness of the County to the seat of Central Government (in Monrovia, Montserrado County) and irregular media reports on these issues in the County for Government’s prompt intervention.
Another problem about the Grand Kru County’s judicial sector is the County-based Grand Kruans’ maltreatment of citizens of other Counties who are filling judicial gaps created by absence of the County’s learned Lawyers, members of the Ministry of Justice, who can’t come home due to the Country’s deplorable roads and lack of essential amenities—electricity and pipe-borne water.
“I accept to work in Grand Kru County, because the County’s learned lawyers, based in Monrovia, refused to come and serve because of the bad road conditions, no electricity, water, and absence of other essential commodities. But many of the County’s people soon started undermining my judicial functions, saying I was of different County,” Mr. Joseph Constance, former Public Defender of Grand Kru, during the presidency of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, complained to this writer in Monrovia.