Cebu City courts start electronic filing of cases, bail application amid ECQ
The Cebu City Hall of Justice is located at the Qimonda IT Center. | CDND File Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The filing of cases and applications for bail at the Cebu City Regional Trial Court (RTC) will already be done online.
In an April 4, 2020 advisory, Cebu City RTC Executive Judge Macaundas Hadjirasul said criminal complaints and applications for bail may be submitted to the courts electronically through the official e-mail address of the Office of the Clerk of Court.
This new measure came a week after the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine in the entire province of Cebu, including Cebu City.
Hadjirasul, in his advisory, said the electronic filing of complaints and application for bail is in compliance with the administrative circular issued by the Supreme Court on March 31 and the implementing guidelines stipulated in the Office of the Court Administrator Circular No. 89 – 2020 released by Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez on April 3.
Under the implementing guidelines of electronic filing, all clerks of courts and branch clerks of courts were tasked to create “official” email addresses for their respective branches “where criminal complaints, information, and other related court pleadings or submission may be electronically transmitted.
“All court orders, pleadings, and other submissions to the courts, which will be electronically transmitted, must be in Portable Document Format (PDF). Pieces of evidence which are not documentary in nature may be photographed and converted into PDF, but must be authenticated by a certification of the person submitting such evidence as a true photo reproduction thereof,” the OCA circular reads.
The courts have been operating on skeletal force since late March due to the threat of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Read: Cebu City courts to remain open for ‘urgent’ matters
“All 22 branches of this court and the offices under it are physically closed effective March 23, 2020, but our judges and staff are ON CALL to act on urgent matters under Administrative Circulars 31-2020, 32 -2020, NS 33-2020,” the executive judge’s advisory reads. / dcb
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