TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Chief of the Supreme Court (MA) Sunarto revealed a shortage of judges in first-instance courts. Sunarto initially explained the performance of handling cases in first-instance courts in four judicial areas: general judicial, religious judicial, military judicial, and administrative judicial.

"The case burden in 2024 is 2,991,747 (2.9 million), plus the remaining cases from 2023 amounting to 63,932," said Sunarto during the Annual Report of the Supreme Court in 2024 on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, cited from the Supreme Court's YouTube channel.

He said out of 2,856,821 cases have been decided, or 2.85 million. Meanwhile, 61,804 cases have been withdrawn. This leaves 73,122 cases remaining in 2024.

"Thus, the productivity ratio of cases decided in the first-instance courts in the four judicial areas is 97.56 percent," said Sunarto.

Millions of cases are handled by 5,804 judges of first-instance. In addition, 350 ad hoc first-instance judges handle corruption cases and labor disputes.

Sunarto then compared the number of judges and case burdens, showing that the average case burden for each first-instance judge in a year is 1,547 cases.

"The high workload of judges in first-instance courts indicates a shortage of judges," he said.

He revealed the Supreme Court's strategy to overcome the shortage of judges by issuing dispensation permits to conduct trials with a single judge.

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