By Betheena Kae Unite More than a thousand pending cases of seizure and forfeiture against various shipments at the Manila International Container Port (MICP) have been identified for disposal, its top official recently said. (MANILA BULLETIN) A total of 1,236 pending cases are up for disposal, MICP District Collector Erastus Sandino Austria. However, a faster process to resolve these cases should be done before the disposal takes place. The port’s Law Division is implementing systems to expedite the release of decisions on seizure, forfeiture, and abandonment proceedings of these cases, with some cases dating as far back as 2012, according to Austria. "This is part of the port's efforts to expedite the removal of overstaying containers with pending cases at the yard,"Austria said. He said that all cases are now cataloged in a database where each case’s details and status can be easily monitored so that overdue cases can easily be identified and assigned for faster disposition from the Law Division. The law division has been dispensing formal-trial type of proceedings and encouraging claimants to submit position papers preparatory to rendering a decision in a bid to shorten the time to decide on cases. This will also lessen the time a seized, forfeited, or abandoned shipment gets to be ready for auction or condemnation, Austria said. Cases with pending decision, the district collector said, pose a bottleneck in the removal of overstaying containers at the yard as shipments with undecided cases cannot be auctioned or disposed of in accordance with law. The faster disposition of cases allows MICP to remove more containers in the yard to improve yard utilization and avoid port congestion.