Duterte Admin To Create P100 Million DOJ Academy In 2017

The Department of Justice intends to establish next year an academy that will improve the prosecutors skills in handling cases.

According to DOJ Undersecretary Erickson Balmes, the DOJ academy is a way to equip prosecutors and officials of agencies connected to DOJ.

“The DOJ academy would help to train our prosecutors more, we are borrowing the patterns from Philippine Judiciary Academy (Philja), where they train judges,” he said.

Furthermore, Balmes said that hopefully with the academy, prosecutors will be better in handling of cases and will be effective in drafting of pleadings.

He said that aside from prosecutors the academy is also set to train other members of the DOJ family, which includes Public Attorney’s Office (Pao) lawyers, immigration lawyers, and officials from National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

“Down the line we hope to equip people, you do not send your troops to war if they are not equipped and ask them to win. They will not win by sheer talent alone so there are efforts to modernize. We are rolling out our equipment and send them out, hopefully next year makakapag simula na tayo dito sa ating DOJ academy,” Balmes said.

He added that Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre already requested P100 million for this, which will have boarding facilities.

Moreover, Balmes said that many people have expressed their support to the idea of establishing of the academy, among them, US Ambassador Philip Goldberg.

Balmes further said that the Mandatory Legal Education for prosecutors can also be hosted in the academy and that it should be done in such a way that core professors hired within the academy will have no other job but to design appropriate trainings.

“We hope that the promotion of prosecutors will be based on number of seminars isang factor hindi naman lahat yan, kung ang judges mayroong prejudicature bago maging judge dumadaan sa seminar dito rin sana bago ka mag-apply (for prosecutor) meron ka nang seminar, meron kanang na kuhang pre-qualification,” he added.

In addition, Balmes also said that they want to address the complaints of prosecutors who have not undergone even a single training in their one or two years of practice.

“So ang plano namin bago namin kayo pabayaan sa field meron tayong things to do. Public official kana e, you cannot do the things you do when you are in private practice,” Balmes said.

Source: Sunstar