Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter 

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie says in­ad­e­quate staffing, re­sources, poor pay­ment pack­ages for judges and fund­ing con­tin­ue to im­pede op­er­a­tions with­in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

He made the com­ment dur­ing the open­ing of the 2024-2025 Law Term at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, Port-of-Spain.

While this was a re­peat of con­cerns raised dur­ing pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, Archie was al­so quick to set the tone.

“This is not about point­ing fin­gers, but nei­ther is liv­ing in de­nial. What we will not do in the ju­di­cia­ry is ac­cept licks for things that are out­side of our con­trol,” the CJ said.

Archie con­tend­ed that con­trary to pub­lic ut­ter­ances sug­gest­ing the ju­di­cia­ry was in re­ceipt of sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey, the in­de­pen­dent body has had to nav­i­gate com­plex op­er­a­tions with 1.07 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get, with ju­di­cial of­fi­cers be­ing forced to op­er­ate un­der sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure.

“Much is said about de­lays in the ju­di­cia­ry and peo­ple pre­sume that peo­ple in the ju­di­cia­ry, those judges, need to work hard­er. Noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth. We have the largest case­load in the re­gion de­spite not be­ing the most pop­u­lous in the ju­ris­dic­tion. The judges and staff in the ju­di­cia­ry work hard and long,” he said.

The Chief Jus­tice lament­ed that since 2020, ju­di­cial of­fi­cials across var­i­ous de­part­ments have been serv­ing dual roles in the ab­sence of ap­provals for staff.

“The ju­di­cia­ry is al­so faced with a high staff turnover, in­clud­ing ju­di­cial of­fi­cers whose qual­i­ty is more re­spect­ed else­where and who are ac­cept­ing su­pe­ri­or com­pen­sa­tion for less stress­ful work and far small­er work­loads.”

Archie fur­ther con­tend­ed that de­spite ef­forts to bridge the widen­ing gaps in staffing, lit­tle head­way has been made over the years. Ac­cord­ing to him, it is due large­ly, in part, to two Cab­i­net notes, one re­quest­ing the abil­i­ty to recog­nise rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence for com­pen­sa­tion pur­pos­es in stan­dard­ised po­si­tions and the oth­er, a ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion for jobs with­in the ju­di­cia­ry.

“The point I’m mak­ing is that if a sim­ple pol­i­cy de­ci­sion that crit­i­cal­ly im­pacts us is tak­ing two years, then it is not just the ju­di­cia­ry, it is the coun­try that has a se­ri­ous prob­lem with the way things are run and we are caught in the web just like every­body else.”

Archie ex­plained that the staffing short­falls have threat­ened the clo­sure and op­er­a­tions of courts, in­clud­ing the Princes Town Fam­i­ly Court.

“In­clud­ed in this note is the re­quest for staff es­tab­lish­ment for the Princes Town Fam­i­ly Court which we es­tab­lished in Ju­ly 2021. An orig­i­nal note for the staffing of the Princes Town Fam­i­ly Court was pre­vi­ous­ly sub­mit­ted in 2020 to fa­cil­i­tate its open­ing, we are now in 2024. When no staff was ap­proved, we pulled staff from every­where we could, ask­ing them to dou­ble up think­ing we would get the ap­proval to hire staff in short or­der.

“This al­so did not ma­te­ri­alise and con­se­quent­ly, I am now faced with the pos­si­ble de­ci­sion of shut­ting down the court since staff who gen­er­ous­ly sac­ri­ficed their time are buck­ling un­der the present load.”

The CJ al­so ze­roed in on poor com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages which, he said, con­tributed to a drop in em­ploy­ee mo­ti­va­tion. Dur­ing his ad­dress, he took the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion to task for this.

“Af­ter rec­om­mend­ing in­creas­es for 93 per cent of of­fices un­der its purview, the SRC is now at­tempt­ing to re­duce the salaries of mas­ters, which, get this, were fixed by par­lia­ment.”

Archie said there has been no con­sul­ta­tion over the pro­posed move and was shocked that the SRC claimed judges’ salaries were ap­pro­pri­ate over a decade af­ter they were last ad­just­ed.

“When a pub­lic agency takes the de­ci­sion that it does not have to obey the law passed by par­lia­ment be­cause a lawyer thinks it is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, we in trou­ble.”

Ac­cord­ing to the 98th re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion pub­lished in 2013, the rec­om­men­da­tion for the base salary of the Mas­ter of the High Court is $32,700 a month. The start­ing salary for a deputy chief mag­is­trate, reg­is­trar and mar­shal is 30,040 per month.

The Chief Jus­tice said while there con­tin­ue to be lin­ger­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the ju­di­cial sys­tem, the procla­ma­tion of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act last year had played a role in pro­vid­ing res­o­lu­tions to the back­log of cas­es.

“In the whole of 2023, 242 crim­i­nal mat­ters were de­ter­mined in the High court. For this first half of the year, 215 mat­ters have been de­ter­mined. Of these, 151 were mat­ters that were al­ready in the sys­tem, so we’re al­ready ahead of last year’s tal­ly.”