BT City employees tussle with lawyer Chimkango over fees
Blantyre-based lawyer Bob Chimkango is in a fight with 26 Blantyre City Council employees who accuse him of duping them after being paid K35, 000 as fees when he represented them in a house-buying quest from their employer.
According to ducuments in Nyasa Times possession, the employees sought legal help from Chimkango in 2011 in their quest to buy houses from the city in which they are sitting tenants.
Management has been refusing to sell the houses to the employees, arguing they are institutional houses.
But the employees argue that management is selfish because it has sold houses to all senior officers.
According to documents, the employees engaged Chimkango to act on their behalf and paid him an advance fee of K35,000 out of K350,000 which he demanded.
But seeing that nothing is being done on the matter, the employees wrote Chimkango in a September 23 2012 warning the lawyer to pay back the money or face unspecified action because “it has taken over a year now” since he started dodging the employees.
“We write to inform that we no longer need your legal help. What we want now is our money, K35 000 and all our documents in this case. This letter is our last option after calling you several times but without responding and failing to get you at your house. What you should know is that your conduct has brought lack of trust among ourselves as some of our friends think we misappropriated the money.
“Your conduct clearly shows that you robbed us of our money. It was not easy to get the money because it came from contributions of individuals,” reads the letter in part signed by one Kambeta on behalf of other employees.
According to the documents, each of the 25 employees was supposed to contribute K14 000 to pay for the whole bill of K350,000.
First payment of K25 000 was made on 25 November 2011 through receipt number 201 of Robert Lexis Law Consultants and the second of K10 000 using receipt number 153 was made on 31 November 2011.
The receipts are in the name of Kambeta and 25 others.
Chimkango was not available for comment after trying his phone several times.
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :