TANZANIANS have been urged to trust and use paralegals to end gender-based violence (GBV) and other social problems facing society in their areas and build an equitable society in which everyone enjoys equal rights.
The advice was given at the weekend in Mwanza City by Kivulini Programme Officer Yunis Mayengela during training of more than 40 paralegals from six councils of Mwanza Region to get acquainted with laws of the land and society to end vices facing their communities.
She said since laws were still violated there was a need to trust paralegals because they were trained on some of the fundamental rights.
Ms Mayengela said that paralegals had been mandated to provide legal aid to the community under the Legal Aid Act, 2017 to expand legal aid to the community.
“We have trained them for 15 days to understand different laws so that they can go and educate members of the community in their places and provide legal aid on problems like land disputes, marriage conflicts, parental care, widow inheritance, denying widows the right to own property and stigmatisation of women,” explained Ms Mayengela.
She further said that paralegals would have a role of helping the community to understand where to get legal aid once they faced problems in their areas and empower the community to know how to claim their legal rights in case they were violated.
“Widows are still denied to own property. Early marriage is still a problem. There is oppression of women in families, girls are denied education and cases of rape are some of the challenges the paralegals address.”
Ms Mayengela said paralegals would be required to go and register themselves so that they could start providing legal aid to needy people.
Mr Deogratias Dominic from Ukiruguru Ward in Misungwi who also attended training said in his area that abandonment of children and inheritance rights were among the problems facing them, while Ms Flaviana Mathias from Bugarika Ward in Nyamagana Municipal Council said GBV was still practised in her area.
