The Nationalist Party said today that appointments and judges and magistrates in the coming weeks will not serve to cut down on court delays. Added to this, inquiries related to corruption and the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia will still be hindered by the growing workload for magistrates.

In a statement, the PN said that the government will be appointing three judges and three magistrates. This would still mean that the judge’s complement will be two short of the 24 the government had promised in 2014, while the situation with magistrates will remain the same.

Until today, the situation with regard magistrates’ work has not been addressed to set up a system that will see inquiring magistrates separated from those who hear court cases. Such a system would go a long way to see that both inquiries and court cases move at a faster rate.

Magistrates are seeing their workload increase comprehensively because of the number of inquiries and cases they have under their responsibility. Malta also has the lowest number of judges, per capita, in Europe, the PN said.