FORTY-EIGHT YEAR-OLD teacher of Kasongo village in Mansa has testified before the local court how her two step children mock her that she resembles a crocodile and calls her barren.

This is in a matter in which Florence Bunda is demanding respect from her two step daughters. Bunda alleged that her two step children have also placed their house on rent without her consent.Appearing before senior local court magistrate Leorntina Zaloumis, sitting with magistrate Margaret Sankalimba was Theresa Chileya, 15 and Mubanga Chileya, 17, both of Kasongo village in Chief Kalasalukangaba’s who stood as defendants.
Bunda said when she got married to Kunda Chileya in 2008, he found her with two children and the two started living together in a house she had built alone.

Bunda said her step daughters always go to her house to insult her and call her names, accusing her of squandering their father’s money.
She said one day, she travelled to Samfya with her husband only to find that her two step daughters have put the house on rent and squandered the money.
“These children also get their father’s property by force and mock me that I look like a crocodile,” she said.
Bunda said her husband is ill and her children have left her to nurse him alone.

She told the court that she has not been able to give her husband a child and that her step children use her predicament to mock her.
And Mubanga, who is in Grade Nine told the court that they resorted to selling household property because their father does not support them.

Mubanga said their step mother despises them and locks the doors to their father’s house whenever she sees them approaching their home.
She said one day her step-mother threatened to poison her and her sister, who is in Grade Eght saying they bother her too much.
Mubanga said thereafter, she called her step mother a crocodile and a bad hearted woman.

“I called my mother bad- hearted and likened her to a crocodile, which gets hold of a human being and ensures that it kills him or her after she threatened to poison us,” she said.

In passing the judgment, magistrate Sakalimba noted that the two children had no respect for their mother.
Ms Sakalimba urged the two girls to respect their mother so that they can live longer.
She reconciled them by asking them to hug each other and go home in peace.