Officials in this capital of Guangdong Province are beefing up the city's judicial development by establishing more judicial organizations at grass-roots level in the next two years.

Sources with the Guangzhou Municipal Justice Bureau said on Tuesday that the city is set to build 60 more judicial organizations next year and 68 more in 2007.

"The establishment of grass-roots judicial bodies aims to better provide legal assistance to, as well as solve civil disputes for, community members," said Ye Yuchang, the bureau director.

These grass-roots organizations are designed to resolve civil disputes - including marriage disputes, quarrels between neighbours and sometimes minor cases of domestic violence - and provide residents with other types of legal services.

According to Ye, the organizations will be mainly located in the districts where the number of civil cases has been rising over the past few years.

"The current judicial development has witnessed some problems, such as shortages of qualified judicial professionals," Ye said.

For example, the organization at Linhe Street, which has more than 40,000 residents, has only three staff members, who have to deal with a great number of civil cases each year.

In Guangzhou, 420 judicial employees work in 164 streets and districts. Last year, they handled 10,798 cases of civil disputes, of which 10,441 were resolved.

In another development, Ye said the city will try to train more qualified judicial workers in the years to come.

He also suggested closer cooperation between such grass-roots judicial organizations and people's courts should be encouraged.

"For example," Ye said, "judicial workers at the grass-roots level may serve as members of a jury in the

(China Daily August 25, 2005)