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Unsettled court orders at K150bn

  • Attorney General moves to clear
  • Some claims date back to 1995

By October 30 2020 the Malawi Government owed claimants seeking justice K150 billion in judgement debts dating back to 1995 and Attorney General Chikosa Silungwe says the claims will be settled in chronological order.

Mhango: It will put to rest concerns of perceived bias

In a February 15 2020 communication to the Malawi General, as custodian of the Constitution and head of the Malawi bar, said he believes the chronological order in making payments relating to judgement debts will bring sanity.Law Society (MLS) the Attorney

“The bulk of the letters my office receives from colleagues in private practice relates to reminders of unpaid judgement debts. We simply did not have a system of payment of judgement debts.

“I am confident that the use of the chronological list should bring order to the payment of judgement debts,” he said.

Silungwe said his office has since submitted to Treasury 155 judgement debt cases amounting to K150.05billion to clear the backlog.

Speaking in an interview yesterday, he said in the absence of a system in settling the debts, some old cases were not being attended to.

Silungwe: What will be paid is what was ordered

Said Silungwe: “We wanted to bring order to the payment of debts. Once upon a time we did not know how much government is owing. This [the list] will help Treasury to plan and settle debts. It is good for everyone.

“If you don’t have a system, some files are forgotten. Now that we have a system it will help solve the problem.”

Although his wish is to have the payments cleared as soon as possible, he said the clearance will be subject to Treasury priorities.

Silungwe said the cases making the list of 155 are those where there is no appeal.

On whether the payments will take into account the time value of money, he said the amounts awarded in the judgements will not be tampered with.

“We are not changing anything. What will be paid is what was ordered,” said Silungwe.

In a separate interview, MLS president Burton Mhango hailed the new arrangement to have payments follow a chronological order, saying it will put to rest concerns of perceived bias.

He said the old system was prone to abuse as there was no criteria on who should be paid.

“We recommend the AG’s thinking. It will put checks on why some people are being paid and others are not,” said Mhango.

He also asked government to properly defend cases, observing that some of the cases could have been defended and avoid the huge debt.

Mhango added that some cases are also not worth defending as they only attract interests. He said where it is noted that the case is weak, government would save resources by making settlement swiftly.

In his reaction, Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Gift Trapence said as long the settlements are being made within the law there was no problem with the proposed settlement plan.

“Every decision that government has to make should be within the law. So, if the payments are within the law, there is no problem,” he said.

Ministry of Finance spokesperson Williams Banda asked for more time before commenting on the matter.

For years, there have been concerns over delays in settling judgement debts for some cases while new files have been getting allocations.

Besides judgement debts, government also owes private sector suppliers over K500 billion.

In his address to MLS, Silungwe also tackled disciplinary issues affecting lawyers, highlighting that out of the K128.2 million the Disciplinary Committee ordered errant lawyers to pay in 49 matters, it is only in 24 matters that restitution orders totalling K77.1 million were honoured.

He said in 25 disciplinary matters, errant lawyers did not honour the restitution; hence, K51.1 million is still outstanding.

Silungwe appealed to lawyers to be professional in the discharge of their duties to the nation.

In recent years there has been a rise in reported cases of lawyers swindling clients their compensation awards in court.

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