Colonial laws under review

The Constitutional and Law Reform Commission’s contribution to the government’s vision of ‘Taking Back PNG’ and the ‘Richest Black Christian Nation’ is by reviewing all colonial laws to suit the circumstances of the nation.

Acting Secretary of the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission, Dorothy Mimiko-Kesenga, made these remarks when receiving the customs recording project report from the School of Law at UPNG.

The Constitutional and Law Reform Commission is currently reviewing, or assisting, in the review of some of these outdated laws which number about 370, including laws on drugs and alcohol, civil and identity registry and city planning, among other legislations.

Since July last year, the CLRC and UPNG’s School of Law embarked on a joint program to engage students’ assistance to record customary laws that would assist CLRC in reviewing them.

CLRC acting secretary, Dorothy Mimiko-Kesenga, said: “Reviewing colonial laws is also one of them. A major one, and in terms of underlying law which this project is about…We have come up with a number of programs and recording customs is one of them.”

Emanating from a 2018 MOU, the projects saw 30 third year law students engaged between October 2018 and March 2019 to collect their respective customs and report back on the findings, of which 27 reports were submitted and given to CLRC on Wednesday.

“We are grateful that UPNG has assisted us in doing that role – recording customs. We are thinking the way forward would be to do the same in other provinces,” stated Mimiko-Kesenga.

Under the customs recording MoU, the university received K110,000 for the exercise, which was also acquitted and presented in the reports.

Author: 
Sally Pokiton