PAO lacking lawyers

The Public Attorney's Office based in Cebu City is sending out a call for lawyers as it is severely lacking in manpower after many of its members were either transferred to the government's prosecution service or are now engaged in private practice.

Regional public attorney Hermelo Butron said he now only has 58 lawyers attending to more than 13,000 different cases pending before the courts, prosecutors offices, labor courts and other quasi-judicial bodies in Central Visayas.

Since the PAO is presently handling 13,000 pending cases, it would mean that each of the 58 lawyers has to handle at least 224 cases -either to defend their clients in court proceedings or some other kind of legal service.

Each of the four provinces in Central Visayas -Bohol, Negros Oriental, Siquijor and Cebu- have assigned public attorneys to handle the cases of indigent clients whose monthly earning are less than P12,000.

Butron said 12 lawyers resigned from the PAO last year and four others are expected to follow them this year. Assistant Cebu City prosecutor Ma. Theresa Agan was among those resigned from the PAO last year to join the prosecution service.

Butron said the regional public attorney's office was able to hire seven lawyers, but still the PAO cannot cope with maintaining an effective management of all cases given the number of cases handled by each PAO lawyer.

"This predicament cannot guarantee a maximized disposition of cases targeted for the year," Butron said.

The records showed that at the beginning of year 2005, PAO-Region 7 had 13,460 pending cases that were carried over from 2004, then there were 9,243 new cases received by the PAO last year.

Of the 22,703 cases handled by PAO lawyers last year, only 8,837 were disposed, meaning there are still 13,866 cases pending at the PAO this year.

Of those disposed cases, 5,096 or 57 percent were given a favorable action or decision, 1,149 cases came out with an unfavorable decision for the PAO clients, while 2,592 cases were either put to archive or the clients decided to let a private lawyer handle their case.

The lowest-paid PAO lawyers receive close to P20,000 a month. - Rene U. Borromeo