6 High court judges and several judiciary service commission officials are reportedly in quarantine after they contracted COVID-19, The NewsHawks reports.
This has even prompted Chief Justice Luke Malaba to issue a practice direction 3 of 2021 which regulates the operations of the court during the extended lockdown.
A source that spoke to the publication about the development said judges were going to court on an ad hoc basis:
There are six judges currently on quarantine. Four (names supplied) tested positive, while two have had their close family members test positive. Besides those, a number of staff members are also on Covid-19 quarantine and this has seriously affected work here
It’s a crisis. Judges are coming on ad hoc basis, mainly for bail hearings but a lot of cases have been indefinitely postponed. What this implies that when normalcy returns, there will be a huge backlog of cases which will take a long time to clear.
Lawyers are saying the development since the lockdown has started has resulted in some of their cases being postponed indefinitely and some lawyers are frustrated by the situation and they cannot do anything about it.
Last week a High court judge from Marondera succumbed to the virus.
