New court fees implemented
Government and lawyers have agreed to start implementing new court fees which were earlier deemed prohibitive and could affect access to justice for ordinary Malawians.
Malawi Law Society (MLS) and the Judiciary confirmed in interviews yesterday that the new fees came into effect on April 7 2014 following a consent judgement agreed between the office of the Attorney General, Ralph Kasambara, MLS and Hophmally Makande at the High Court in Blantyre on March 24, 2014.
Kasambara’s firm, Ralph and Arnolds and Associates, MLS and Makande obtained an injunction on the new fees in 2011 after the fees were increased by thousands of percentage points in some cases.
However, MLS still believes that the new fees will have serious implications on access to justice by ordinary Malawians because they remained separate from legal fees charged on their clients as lawyers.
“For some people, these fees are still too high. But we do understand that we can’t expect the court to continue charging fees from many years ago since the economic environment has changed. But people should understand that these charges will be transferred to the ordinary Malawian seeking justice,” MLS president Mandala Mambulasa said.
High Court registrar Joseph Chigona also confirmed that the parties had agreed to put a stop to the conflict on the new court fees but there was a pending judicial review, especially on the injunctions order, which has been pegged at K25 000.
“The injunction matter is still in court and will not be implemented until a judicial review takes place, but the rest of the fees became effective last week Monday,” Chigona said.
According to the new schedule, an application for an order or to make a submission has gone up by 9 900 percentage points from K10 to K 1 000 (US$2.3), a petition for divorce will now cost a Malawian K5 000 (US$12) from K60 which is 7 400 percent.
A user of the High Court lodging a notice to appeal to the Supreme Court will have to fork out K5 000, an increase of 9 100 percentage points from K50.
Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito has described the increase as unfair and prohibitive to ordinary Malawians, discriminating against the poor who would like to access justice.
“Access to justice is a human right and should not be traded at a commercial value,” Kapito said.
