By FLAVIOR CHISHALA –
.LUO
GENDER Minister Nkandu Luo has called on Government to develop a new law that will deter sexual offenders.
Professor Luo said sexual offences must be taken seriously and be treated with a sense of emergency because the victims were young people.
She said the Sexual Violence Bill would be extracted from the already existing pieces of legislation.
Prof Luo said the Bill would ensure that defilement and rape cases were not bailable at any cost as this led to the perpetrators not serving the required sentence and punishment.
She stipulated a period of three months in which the Bill could be implemented and become law so that women, girls and boy’s lives were protected as every woman was a potential candidate for defilement and rape.
Prof Luo said Zambia needed to punish sexual offenders differently, adding that defiling a child left a permanent mark and was as good as murdering the victim.
She said the ministry would not wait until a child was abused and take the offender to appear before a fast track court, but it would see to it that a law was put in place.
“2015 has been a sad year for the Gender Ministry. The records of child defilement and rape were the order of the day with most offenders going scot free but I want to assure you that 2016 would be a different year,” she said.
