Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh
10 July 2009
The Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, has assured Ghanaians that the government would stop at nothing to ensure that nobody suffers injustice because of his/her economic conditions.
According to her, the government would do everything possible to strengthen the Legal Aid Scheme, to enable it provide timely legal services to Ghanaians. Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu made this known at the inauguration of an 11-member Legal Aid Board in Accra recently.
She noted that there were more than a thousand persons in prison custody, who had no valid remand or conviction warrants covering them, emphasising: "A viable legal system would not allow that to happen. The system would pursue every case from arrest to conclusion of trial" to ensure that there is equal justice for all.
The collective security and progress of Ghana depends largely on the trust by the vulnerable and the excluded in the justice delivery system in the country.
The Legal Aid Scheme, under the new board, would be required to develop the needed confidence by the diligence and transparency which legal services are made available to them.
The Minister for Justice believed that the new board would not fail her, the President, and, above all, the people of this country, in this noble task.
She used the occasion to appeal to private lawyers in the country to assist Legal Aid by providing legal services to the scheme, as a way of their humanitarian services to the vulnerable in society.
The Chairman of the 11-member board, Justice William A. Atuguba, thanked the government for the confidence reposed in them, to enable them serve the vulnerable in society.
The Director of Legal Aid, Mr. Alhassan Seini, appealed to the government to provide logistics for the smooth running of the organisation.
He disclosed that Legal Aid had no offices in four regions of the country, namely Central, Volta, Upper West and Upper East.
In a related development, a nine-Commissioner of the Law Reform Commission was also inaugurated by the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice.
The nine-Commissioner of the Law Reform Commission is under the Chairmanship of Justice S. K. Date-Bah.
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