M’membe High Court files puzzle

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 10:35:26 +0000

By CHIKUMBI KATEBE

MYSTERY surrounds the management of two commercial case files in the Lusaka High Court Commercial Registry.

This is in connection with the 2017/HPC/0050 and 2017/HPC/0059 both of which cases were commenced by Lusaka businessman and former Post Newspaper in Liquidation owner Fred M’membe.

Registry personnel in the commercial registry had initially indicated that the matters although they were both filed in February 2017, had not been scanned as per procedure because the computer system in their new offices in the former National Housing Authority (NHA) building were not connected.

The officials in the registry have still failed to locate the file or even access its soft copy in the Judiciary’s computer network, because after allocation, both case files had been locked away in a named Judge’s chambers with no access for the records people.

2017/HPC/0050 is a case file between Fred M’membe versus Investrust Bank, and the 2017/HPC/0059 was a matter between Fred M’membe versus Roy Habaalu, Andrew Chiwende and 3 others.

Records have indicated that both matters were allocated to Justice Winnie Mweenda of the Commercial division of the Lusaka High Court.

Efforts to follow up with the registry officials including the marshals have been unsuccessful.