Malawi Judiciary maintains pay hike demand

The Magistrates and Judges Association of Malawi (Majam) says it believes the Executive arm of government is obliged by law to replicate the recent salary increments in the civil service within the Judiciary.

Majam’s position comes as Judiciary support staff on Monday entered the seventh week of their strike after they downed tools on November 10 2014 to force government to raise their salaries as it did with mainstream civil servants.

In a statement published at the weekend, Majam said the current dialogue with the Executive branch relates and is restricted to the implementation of duly approved and existing terms and conditions of service.

The statement said specific to these terms and conditions is Clause 4(2) of the Terms and Conditions of Service for Judicial Officers as approved on April 3 2013 which provides: “Whenever there is a general increase in salaries and allowances in the civil service, the salary and allowances of a Judicial officer shall correspondingly be increased.”

However, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Goodall Gondwe is on record as having said that Treasury would not implement the Judiciary requests and proposals, which included a new Toyota Land Cruiser VX V8 engine vehicle for the Chief Justice and a new fleet for judges amounting to K1.6 billion because it would defeat the purpose of harmonisation of salaries in the civil service.

He said government cannot implement the vehicle demands, especially when the President’s vehicle is 10 years old and the Vice-President is not getting a new vehicle.

But Mwiza Nkhata, an associate professor of law at the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College, has cautioned that government’s decision to harmonise salaries in the public service to achieve equity of benefits among workers “may simply be illegal because in other institutions, the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, dictates procedures of how a particular department would be enumerated.”