Malawi Law Society (MLS) has described the non-functional of courts across the country due to strike by Judiciary support staff as regrettable.
Judiciary support staff went on strike on Monday July 31, 2017 to force their employer to pay them a housing allowance just like one is paid to judicial officers.
The strike has left Malawians seeking justice hopeless as courts are not functioning.
In a statement released on Thursday made available to faceofmalawi reporter, MLS Chairperson Khumbo Bonzoe Soko has described the situation as regrettable.
“In any well-functioning democracy, courts, by the very nature of the business that they undertake, are never supposed to be shut down and rendered inaccessible to all those who might wish to call them in their aid from time to time.
“Closure of the courts denies our citizens justice, compromises the right of lawyers and those employed by them to earn a living and profoundly damages our nation’s credibility as a serious destination for foreign direct investment. It really is to our nation’s great discredit that this constitutional aberration is somehow being normalized,” reads in part the statement.
He added: “What makes our situation even more remarkable is the apparent failure to invest in robust institutional mechanisms for dealing with grievances that those who populate the ranks of the Judiciary, be it in a judicial or supporting capacity, raise. It is not entirely responsible to allow industrial disputes in the Judiciary to result in full blown strikes before serious attention is paid to them.”
Soko has since urged government, the Judicial Service Commission and the striking members of the Judiciary to resolve “this dispute as a matter of grave urgency so that the courts resume their normal business.”
