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Lovemore Meya Herald Correspondent
Chitungwiza Municipality will soon recruit a legal officer in a move that is expected to cut costs as the local authority has been outsourcing legal services for the past three years. Currently, Chitungwiza, which owes its lawyers Matsikidze and Mucheche Legal Practitioners, a staggering $165 000 in legal fees, is paying $10 000 monthly to retire the debt. Chitungwiza’s chamber secretary, Mrs Charity Maunga, who is doubling as the Acting Town Clerk, said outsourcing legal advice has been a drain on council resources.

“We are facing many legal cases at the moment and we are outsourcing those,” said Mrs Maunga. “This post has always been there on the organogram, but since April 2015, there was no internal legal team both from the chamber secretary and any other departments up until I joined council early this year. The unavailability of such a person has a devastating effect since it is risky to any organisation because some decisions can be made without looking at the external legal issues.

“This is the reason why we want an internal legal team to deal with these issues. What we are saying is, exceptional cases, where by law we are not permitted to handle those cases, we can refer them to our external legal team.”

This, Mrs Maunga said, was going to help an already struggling council.

“This is simply a measure aimed at cutting legal costs (cost effective) for the local authority than to outsource everything to external lawyers. This is one of the reasons we are saying we want to move to a situation (where) most of the legal work is done internally.

“If we had an internal legal team, some issues can be handled internally because legal officers are permitted to attend to labour cases in terms of the law.

“We also have cases in the magistrate courts, those can be properly handled internally, while those in the High Court and Supreme Court can then be outsourced.”

According to Mrs Maunga, any local authority needed to have an internal legal team because council often has legal challenges from residents and employees.

“We want to ensure that all internal issues are solved within and we would be outsourcing because in terms of the law, cases in higher courts are only handled by practising lawyers.

“Having internal lawyers is convenient for any organisation because you can get legal advice at a lower cost at the same time monitor legal risks if they are identified, and measures can be put in place to avert those risks.”