Award for lawyer Cecil Rajendra, who spearheaded Malaysia’s first free legal aid clinic
- The Malaysian Bar confers the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award on Rajendra for his outstanding contributions to the country’s legal sector
- The legal luminary, who staunchly believed in protecting human rights, reminisces about one of his most memorable cases
Malaysian lawyer and octogenarian Cecil Rajendra has lived by one mantra during his legal career spanning more than four decades – “seek out the little guy and help if you can”.
This conviction was what drove him and several friends to pioneer a free legal aid clinic in Bayan Lepas free-trade zone in his home state of Penang in 1980.
The zone, set up in 1972, had boosted Penang’s economic fortunes but workers were struggling with housing issues, poor working conditions, non-payment of wages and sexual harassment – and a ban on unions in the area meant they had little access to help.
The Penang Free Legal Advisory Centre raised the hackles of the zone’s authorities and even other lawyers concerned about their own profits. It also earned the group – comprising lawyers, farmers and social worker V. Alfred – the moniker “barefoot lawyers” from a prominent opposition leader.
But the centre soon inspired one in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur and in 1983, the governing committee of the country’s association for lawyers, the Malaysian Bar Council, launched a nationwide legal aid system to provide free advice to the poor.