THE Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) says the country is still short of lawyers to fill up many parts of the country and contribute to delivery of justice.
In an interview, LAZ president Eddie Mwitwa said the situation was quite desperate in certain parts of the country.
Some 202 out of 731 students passed the 2020 ZIALE repeaters’ examinations, quite an improvement when compared to last year’s 10 out of 200 students.
When asked if the association was happy with the improved results at the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE), Mwitwa answered in the affirmative.
He however expressed concern that the deficit was still high.
“Yes. For me personally, I’ve always said that we are short of lawyers in the country for us to make justice a reality for the majority of our people. I think we need to ensure that we have many lawyers, especially lawyers that can work for the legal aid department in various locations in the country where we currently do not have lawyers,” he said yesterday. “The situation is quite worrying. If you go to Luapula or Northern Province, you’ll probably find there are only two or three private legal practitioners for the two big provinces. So, hoping [that] the more lawyers we have the more we’ll make it easy for people to access justice.”
Asked what had led to improved results at ZIALE, Mwitwa responded: “These results were for those students that were repeating courses that they had failed at first attempt. So, there were some that were re-siting, maybe, just one or two courses. And others, I think, they also had more time to study because when you are doing a repeater’s course then you don’t necessary attend the attachments that they normally do when they write for their first sitting. So, I think it’s an issue of may be students having more time to prepare. And, you know when you are repeating a course, usually you have a better understanding of things. Where you made mistakes in the first sitting you probably would have time to make amends. So, I would attribute that positive result to those two factors.”