Pretoria - The re-established environmental courts, which aim to improve the conviction of environmental crime, are expected to be up and running in the next six months.

Minister for Water and Environmental Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica said that the establishment of dedicated courts including dedicated prosecutors will have a profound impact on the fight against environmental crimes.

Sonjica said that a meeting between the Minister of Justice Jeff Radebe and her in September 2009 resulted in the decision to move forward with the process of re-establishing the courts to address many of the challenges experienced in effectively enforcing the environmental laws.

"They will be up and running in six months or even before that, the biggest issue would be how to find them [courts], where do we establish them and finding the skilled people who will be working there," said Sonjica.

She, however, explained that the department would not be building new court buildings but would look at utilising the existing ones for environmental crimes.

"We are going to use the existing ones in a creative way to locate time dedicated for environmental crimes," she said.

The National Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Report released on Wednesday by Sonjica, revealed that a total number of cases in which the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) declined to prosecute increased from 16 in 2007/08 to 100 in 2008/09 and the number of convictions decreased from 748 in 2007/08 to 258 in 2008/09.

The total number of admission of guilt fines issued nearly doubled, from R744 706 in 2007/08 to R1 446 709 in 2008/09 with the number of acquittals also decreasing from 441 in 2007/08 to 18 in 2008/09.

Commenting on the number of cases declined in prosecuting, Sonjica said that it was because the environmental crimes were not the core function of the NPA hence the need for dedicated courts.

"The heart of the problem is conviction and most of the people are getting away with murder when it comes to pollution," Sonjica said, adding that there was a need for a dedicated investigation report on the profiling of the environmental crimes.

Department's Compliance and Enforcement Support Director Mark Jardine said as a way forward, they will focus on the causes for the fluctuations in the number or reported convictions, acquittals and decisions not to prosecute and also why some institutions were recording over 200 convictions per year and others nothing.

Source - BuaNews - By Gabi Khumalo 

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments