Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra and Local Government Secretary Eduardo M. Año led the launching in Balanga City in Bataan on Friday, March 18, the country’ eighth Justice Zone (JZ) – a place where government agencies involved in the delivery of justice converge to address delay and accountability.

The Balanga City Justice Zone is the eight in the country set up by the SC and its two other principals in the Justice Sector Coordinating Council (JSCC) – the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

The other JZs are in Calamba City, Naga City, Bacolod City, Angeles City, Davao City, Cebu City, and Quezon City.

Specifically, the JZ is a place where judges, prosecutors, police, public attorneys and heads of detention facilities converge to identify problems and to iron out common solutions to address them.

The JZ is Balanga City is located at the Bataan Government Center and Business Hub, Capitol Compound.

In his keynote speech during the launching, Chief Justice Gesmundo said the JZ is the showcase program of the JSCC and “it is conceptually a gold standard in the delivery of justice because justice is served real time, when the people actually need it.”

A press statement issued by the SC’s public information office (PIO) said that a JZ “is both a venue and a mechanism for communication, principled cooperation, and studied coordination with great deference to institutional independence.”

“Through the JSCC, the coordinated or sector approach to delivering justice is the chosen platform to achieve real time satisfaction of justice needs. Each agency continues to pursue its stand-alone programs and activities, while at the same time, for activities that require the involvement of two or more agencies” the PIO said.

It also said the JZ “adheres to its objective of a swift and fair administration of the criminal justice system. It is established to strengthen the coordination and communication between the SC, DOJ, and DILG.”

Also in his speech, Gesmundo said the the SC, “motivated for a good part by the lessons learned from the pandemic,” is embarking on a digitization campaign that will see both its adjudicative and administrative processes running on an online platform.

“The Court acknowledges that technology is the highway to the future. We are now building up our ICT Governance and Management Framework which will cover our policies, processes, information flow, organizational structures, people skills and competencies, culture, ethics and behavior, services and applications," he said.

He cited that the JSCC has embarked on the National Justice Information System, which is envisioned to open the lines of communication digitally among the justice sector actors as information sharing will be prioritized, subject to restrictions born of confidentiality and other legal and ethical requirements.

He then urged the public to help and support the JSCC in attaining “our goal of achieving efficiency and accountability in the delivery of justice through our sector or coordinated approach,” to assure a strong and stable rule of law in the country.

For his part, Justice Secretary Guevarra pointed out that “the residual effects of the pandemic and its disruptive impact predictably left our already filled dockets even more congested.”

“Administering justice expeditiously thus becomes even more imperative if we are to compensate for time lost and provide relief to our people seeking justice,” Guevarra stressed.

He then pointed out: “But our accomplishment during the pandemic should give us confidence not only in our resiliency, but more importantly, in our readiness to work together and in our capacity to overcome even the most daunting challenges in our path.”

“More than the adaptive programs or projects that we have successfully implemented, our real accomplishment is our newfound understanding that while each of our institutions must staunchly preserve their independence under the Constitutional scheme of things, we must, and we can, rely on each other to achieve our common objectives,” he added.

A copy of Secretary Ano’s speech was not immediately available.

After the launching, the PIO said that Gesmundo, Guevarra, and Año together with Balanga City Mayor Francis Anthony S. Garcia, Bataan Gov.Albert S. Garcia, and Regional Trial Court Executive Judge Marion Jacqueline P. Poblete pledged their commitment as they signed the “Wall of Commitment.”

It added that also present during the launch were SC Associate Jose Midas P. Marquez, Court of Appeals (CA) Associate Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh, chairperson of the JSCC technical group on Processes and Capacity Building, CA Associate Justices Jennifer Joy C. Ong, Michael P. Ong, and Jose Lorenzo dela Rosa, Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Justice Undersecretary Nicolas Felix L. Ty,

Local Government Assistant Secretary for Plans and Programs Francisco R. Cruz, 2nd District Bataan Rep. Jose Enrique S. Garcia III, Deputy Court Administrator Jenny Lind A. Delorino, Assistant Court Administrator and SC Spokesperson Brian Keith F. Hosaka, Deputy Clerk of Court and Program Management Office Administrator Laura C.H. Del Rosario,

Balanga City judges, prosecutors in Bataan led by OIC Bataan Provincial Prosecutor Mary Jane W. Sytat and Balanga City Prosecutor Oscar M. Lasam, and representatives from the District Public Attorney’s Office, the Philippine National Police-Bataan, and Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Bataan Chapter.