The country is not in a position to legislate on sorcery, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs Fred Mesa says.
He was speaking before the recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recently.
Mesa was answering questions from PAC as to whether the country has any plans to include sorcery into its laws.
Mesa said his ministry was aware of increasing number of criminal cases in the country that are sorcery-related.
However, he said they are not considering devising laws to deal with allegations of sorcery.
“We recognized the use of bush medicines to treat illness as these are traditional medicines that have been used for many generations in the past,” he said.
“But for any allegation of poison related to the practise of witchcraft, the relevant authority is not prepared to include that in our legislations.”
Just recently Papua New Guinea, which also recorded high incidences of sorcery-related crimes, repealed its 1971 Sorcery Act.
PNG now treated sorcery-related killings as murder, and death penalty is now the likely consequence for such offence.
Some International organisations highly condemned the allegation of sorcery, saying that accusation of witchcraft were used to justify violence, usually against women.
By AATAI JOHN
