Ntsoaki Motaung
The High Court of Lesotho postponed the hearing of the street vendors’ case on Monday this week to 14 of February 2021.
This is a case in which street vendors are challenging the government over the national lockdown restrictions where they were denied to go out on streets for work.
The case was supposed to be heard on 7 February 2021 but did not proceed because of fumigation of premises of the high court on Thursday and Friday that led to the court being inaccessible on weekend.
This came after the Prime Minister Dr Moeketsi Majoro eased the hard lockdown last week on Tuesday by allowing many economic activities that were prohibited in three weeks’ lockdown that was meant to help in fighting the spread of Covid-19.
The lawyers representing the government showed that there is lack of cooperation with the side of the applicants’ lawyers because they have not served them their answering papers.
Attorney Monaheng Rasekoai on behalf of the government, indicated that they were ready to argue the case as they have submitted all the papers the court ordered and said they are going to claim the wasted costs.
Meanwhile, Advocate Neo Komota stated that they have not received papers from the government’s side saying that if they did they would be ready to continue with the case.
This comes after the street vendors were denied an interim relief during the hearing of the case last month where Rasekoai stated that the government is working towards fulfilling their mandate of ensuring the wellbeing of the poor people, saying the government has put in place the covid-19 relief fund for the vendors. “To adopt the strategic mitigation of bigotry will create problems and therefore oppose the issuing of the interim relief pending the finalization of the case,†He said.
The street vendors had filed an urgent application earlier on January 15 after the Prime Minister imposed a total lockdown from 14 January to 28 and extended it from 28 to 4.