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Preferential care for the less privileged

My lawyer friends tell me that in labour disputes between an employee and the employer, the judicial system is in practice bent to be more sympathetic with the employee. In other words, if the employee is claiming for unlawful termination of employment, the court will be tending to believe the employee until the employer proves otherwise. Basically, the judicial system and process has a kind of preferential care for the less privileged. That is why we even have the Department of Legal Aid—so that those citizens that cannot afford to pay for legal services, can still access some legal services for ‘free’—a situation that does not ordinarily target the privileged members of our society.

If you studied Bible Knowledge (BK) in secondary education, you will probably remember that one of the key themes of the Gospel of St. Luke was preferential care for the poor. In fact, the Church constantly keeps an eye on protecting the rights and welfare of the poor. That is why we find traditional churches building schools and clinics in the most rural areas of our country not just today but from very long ago. Even the first missionaries, be those of Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian or other denominations and possibly other religions that also subscribe to the principle of preferential care for the poor did not first settle in Blantyre, Lilongwe or Zomba and not even Mzuzu. They went to very rural areas of our country.

The question then is: What about at personal level? What is our approach towards the less privileged? Do we blame or condemn them? Do we sympathise or empathise with them? Do we work to alleviate their struggles or we leave them to perish? What are the little things that we do at individual level to care for the less privileged? If the US Government, together with governments of the UK, Germany, Japan, China and even India always remember to allocate some resources in the budgets for the Third World or developing countries, would you not, at whatever level you are, also allocate a portion of your resources for the person who has less than you? There will always be someone less privileged than you.

Even if you may consider yourself very poor in material resources, there should be something or other things that you have more of than the next person. It could be love from family, mental stability, happiness and joy, sporting ability, gift in entertainment and a million other possibilities. We all need to work to find major issues of concern that affect others and then to the best of our ability, we need to work to alleviate some of those problems. Imagine if everyone in the world spent even just five percent of their time, effort and resources trying to help the next person who is less privileged! This world would be a much fairer and a much safer place to live in. n

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