Its Time Up Honorables!
The Legislators on Tuesday evening left Bill No. 17 of 2016: Courts (Amendment) unfinished as members were rushing home to begin the two day holiday after sitting time was over.
Malawians are celebrating Independence Day Holiday this Wednesday while on Thursday, Muslims will be celebrating the Eid Ul-fitri and both days have been declared holiday.
At 17:00 hours, members defeated the motion to extend the sitting time which Deputy Government Chief Whip, Hon. Grace Chiumia was proposing for the House to complete the business item on the floor which had only remained with few processes to passing.
This happened after the House had just also defeated similar motion but this time sought the conclusion of the same Courts (Amendment) bill then discuss and pass Bill No. 14 of 2016: Human Rights Commission (Amendment).
Courts (Amendment) bill is particularly seeking establishment of divisions in the High Court and empowerment of Chief Justice to make local rules of procedures for the High Court.
According to Justice Minister Samuel Tembenu who presented the bill, establishment of the divisions in High Court intends to ease current workload of cases the High Court has.
Tembenu said at the moment the High Court has only one division which is the Commercial Division and Principle Registry.
He said mentioned that the bill seeks to establish the family and probate division, revenue division, criminal division and the civil division in addition to existing Commercial division.
“We are also empowering the Chief Justice to be able to promulgate or to make rules of the procedure for the High Court because at the moment we are using rules that we borrowed from England. So, we want him to be making his own rules.” Said Tembenu who indicated that these rules will be for each division that is to established
Honorable Tembenu expressed hope that establishment of these division “will have a very big impact in the sense that there will be speedy and efficient disposal of cases.”
Added Tembenu; “Our judges will be able to specialize. When we have created the Criminal division, all criminal cases will be going to that, when we have created the revenue division, just to mention a few, means all the tax disputes and other revenue disputes will go to that division. So, we believe that the judges should be able to be more focused and enrich their experience as well.”
The Justice Minister also stressed that with new rules in place, parties will be required to commence legal proceedings in their own region, meaning there will be no tendencies of commencing cases for example in Northern Region when both parties live in Central or Southern Region.
During the general debate of the Bill, members supported the bill stressing that the division will enable speedy conclusion of cases.
It is expected that the bill will come again on Friday for passing as members will at least have an ample time to finish the remaining processes before they rise sine die on the same day.
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