Improve ties with people, legal aid providers urged

Dr Benson Bana

Coordination and collaboration among legal aid providers has been highlighted as crucial elements in the effort to improve legal service delivery in the country.

University of Dar es Salaam’s head of Political Science and Public Administration, Dr Benson Bana, made the remarks over the weekend at a special workshop for legal sector stakeholders including legal aid organizations, prisons, judiciary and social welfare department.

The workshop was organized by the Legal Services Facility (LSF) which is a forum that seeks to enhance coordination and collaboration amongst respective stakeholders to ensure public access to justice in Tanzania.

According to Dr. Bana, who among other things is also a political analyst and lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), improvement of legal service delivery and realization of justice would be impossible if activities of the key stakeholders were not well-coordinated.

“In a situation where you have a critical mass of institutions doing similar activities integrated in strategic goals and objectives, the need for coordination and collaboration becomes indispensable…” Dr.Bana observed.

He also noted that coordination and collaboration enhances efficient use of available resources, minimizes duplication of efforts and curbs wasteful use of resources which in turn enables the legal aid providers to create appropriate networks need to exchange knowledge and experience on the quality and quantity of services as well as sharing best practices in their modus operandi (method of operation).

Coordination and interdependence will enable legal aid providers to deliver desired results, the two elements cannot be separated, as noted by Dr. Bana, the preeminent principle of management is coordination and the essence of coordination is interdependence.

Expounding, he pointed out that, in a situation of interdependence, the need for coordinated action is unavoidable if at all the Legal Service Facility (LSF), judiciary, prison, police, legal aid organizations and other stakeholders are to accomplish their tasks.

“We have to find relevant methods to achieving coordination across the justice sector, among legal aid providers at both national (macro) and grassroots (micro) levels…” he observed.

Speaking at the forum, Scholastica Jullu, LSF Programme Officer (legal sector), said the workshop, amongst other objectives, intends to initiate coordination, communication and information sharing amongst legal aid stakeholders.

“We aspire to forge a working relation amongst legal aid stakeholders that will effectively bring tangible results towards increasing coverage and quality legal aid provision in the country…”

An expert in prison affairs, John Nyoka, was of the opinion that realization of justice for all Tanzanians is next to impossible as long as key stakeholders like police, the judiciary as well as the social welfare department continue to work in isolation.

Kaleb Lameck Gamaya, Programme Director at a legal aid organization, NOLA, had this in mind, “Legal aid stakeholders must work together in a coordinated manner otherwise access to justice will not be realized.”