The Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) has called for measures to increase the training of paralegal personnel to help people in the poor southern African country get access to justice.

LAZ president William Mweemba was quoted by Sunday's Zambia Daily Mail as saying the extent of the problem of lack of access to justice was "depressing" and institutions involved in training and provision of legal resources should work together to design a common strategy to extend paralegal services to the majority that have no access to justice.

"The indigent (needy) of our society need access to justice but the number of legal practitioners offering legal aid is limited," Mweemba said at the launch of University of Zambia Legal Advice Center last Friday.

Mweemba bemoaned that the larger part of Zambia did not have any lawyers at all even in terms of commercial private practice.

There was not a single legal practitioner in three of the nine provinces of the country, said Mweemba, adding that the 480 lawyers in private practice were concentrated in a few cities like the capital Lusaka, Kitwe and Ndola in the wealthy Copperbelt province.

He said the gap left by private practice must be filled by paralegals that need quality training if access to justice in Zambia was to improve.

Source: Xinhua