The figure showed an improvement in the efficiency of the judiciary and raises public confidence in the institution, he said. The success in clearing cases was due to the high demand by businessmen for quicker resolution of trade disputes.

“The Magistrate and Sessions courts in Kuala Lumpur and several other states recorded a high level of settling civil and criminal cases while Penang, Perlis, Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang were still working below the 80 per cent mark.

“Maybe there were specific reasons and we took note of the matter,” he told reporters after opening the annual Judicial Officers Conference here. This year’s theme is Towards Judicial Excellence.

The conference was also attended by Court of Appeals President Md Raus Sharif, Chief Judge of the High Court of Malaya Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin, Chief Judge of the High Court of Sabah and Sarawak, Richard Malanjum, and the Chief Registrar, Latifah Mohd Tahar.

He said the biggest change undertaken by Malaysia’s judiciary in raising its efficiency rate was through a timeline in settling cases.

Arifin called on judicial officers to improve their command of English so they would understand and interpret the law more effectively and decide on cases fairly.

He said that even though Bahasa Malaysia was used as the court language, the importance of English in the field of advocacy was indispensable as Malaysia had inherited the English Common Law system.

“We can see the command of English among our officers has declined. We will try to address the problem by holding in-house training conducted by judges as well as invited speakers from the British Council,” he said.

Arifin said he expected a decision on the proposed separation of service administration of lower courts and legal officers would be made known by the year’s end. A proposal paper had been submitted to the Judicial and Legal Service Commission for consideration.