WHILE a total of 3,957 wards across the country are ripe to have primary courts, only 976 of them have those important grassroots justice dispensing facilities.
That was pointed out by the outgoing
President of the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) Advocate Charles
Rwechungura who said that it was thus crucial for practising lawyers to
start issuing free legal services to Tanzanians in order to offset such
shortages.
TLS is following President John
Magufuli’s cost-cutting initiatives by choosing to scrap their
previously planned Half Annual Meeting for same reasons.
The Minister of Justice and
Constitutional Affairs, Dr Harrison Mwakyembe, who is also one of the
‘learned friends,’ lauded the lawyers’ body decision having been told
that the money which was to be used to fund the TLS Half Annual Meeting
will be used for more constructive projects.
The minister stated this during the
occasion to officiate the TLS Annual Conference and General Meeting
(AGM) which was held at the Arusha International Conference Centre here
at the weekend, attracting hundreds of legal practitioners from across
the nation.
TLS Half Annual Meeting, which was
initially slated for September, is thus cancelled and the money which
was to fund the gathering will now be channelled towards the
construction of the building to house the proposed National Legal Centre
which provides legal assistance to ordinary citizens.
Skipping the September meeting will see the TLS save more than 270 million/-.
It was also stated during the meeting
that the Tanganyika Law Society is working towards updating the database
of advocates willing to take up pro bono. This is the pool of enrolled
and practising advocates willing to volunteer to take up cases of
indigent Tanzanian residents unable to afford to pay advocates’ fee.
No comments:
Post a Comment