Govt fails to renew licences of its lawyers, 44 in AG and DPP chambers prevented from practicing
Ministry of Justice spokesperson Frank Namangale confirmed the expiry of practising licences for about 88 percent of the State lawyers, a development that has affected proceedings of several cases as currently there are only six State prosecutors, including AG Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda and DPP Masauko Chamkakala who are eligible to handle cases in the country’s courts out of about 50 State lawyers.
Namangale, however, could not give details maintaining it’s an issue to do with arrears, but we cannot divulge more because but he emphasized internal matter and it is been sorted out.
About 44 lawyers in the AG Chambers and DPP have since been prevented from practising law, thereby delaying people’s access to justice.
The lawyers’ practising licences expired on January 31 this year and Ministry of Justice is yet to process the renewals.
Section 30 of the Legal Education and Legal Practitioners Act gives Malawi Law Society (MLS) powers to produce an annual practising licence to all the legal practitioners upon payment of licence fee.
In Section 30 (4), the Act states that a legal practitioner shall not be entitled to practise unless he has a valid licence to practise.
Read Section 30 (5) of the Act in part: “The registrar shall not issue a licence to practise to a legal practitioner, unless the legal practitioner has (a) paid the annual subscription to the society; (b) performed the full hours prescribed for the annual mandatory pro-bono work as determined by the society, from time to time.”
MLS data shows that every lawyer’s practising licence expires on January 31 of the following year after the date of its issue. For the 2023/24 practice year, licence practice fee was at K375 000 and MLS had 747 licensed legal practitioners in the 2023/2024 practice year.
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