The LRF Newsletter

Number 16 April/May, 2000

What's in the News?

Front page

LRF Legal Adviser

Around the Centres

Know your rights

Government sued over Police mistake

Police clamp down on Brothels

Public health and you

Back issues of
the LRF Newsletter

Mobile courts suggested

Monze based non-govern mental organisation (NGO), Law and Development Association (LADA), has asked government to introduce mobile High Court sessions in all the districts in the country.

LADA Southern province co-ordinator Charles Dinda said last month that many Zambians in rural areas were denied access to High Court sessions due to scanty locations of High Courts.

“With high poverty levels, many Zambians have no financial capacity to pay for travel expenses,” Dinda said.

According to Dinda, villagers in Southern province had no financial capacity to travel to either Lusaka or Livingstone for High court hearings each time their cases were referred to High courts by the magistrate courts in their respective districts.

He cited a case in which a complainant failed to appeal to the High Court after he expressed unhappiness with a magistrate court’s judgement.

He said the man who sued a motorist for damages after sustaining injuries during an accident, was unhappy when a Monze magistrate court ordered the motorist to pay K165, 000.

“This man sustained permanent injury and can’t work for any firm due to memory elapses and yet the court only awarded him this amount for damages,” Dinda said. “Since the man did not have money for transport to appeal before Livingstone High Court, he opted to get what was awarded despite his disagreement with the ruling.”