All of the laws which Gov­ern­ment is pass­ing may not get very far where the pros­e­cu­tion of of­fences are con­cerned, since the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions’ of­fice has 73 va­can­cies out of its to­tal 128-strong com­ple­ment.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen made the ob­ser­va­tion as he ex­pressed con­cern about the va­can­cies dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sion leg­is­la­tion which seeks to change sec­tions of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, An­ti Ter­ror­ism Act and Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit Act.

Ramdeen not­ed that work has been go­ing on to amend and strength­en laws but re­sults are still lack­ing.

One mat­ter he not­ed has been go­ing on for 11 years with $500 mil­lion spent on this, “yet not a sin­gle per­son has been charged.”

“The time is com­ing when the DPP’s of­fice has to be ac­count­able to the peo­ple. With rights comes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said, not­ing that while the DPP’s of­fice is in­de­pen­dent noth­ing’s in place for ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Ramdeen said as at Au­gust 15, the DPP’s of­fice, which has 128 posts, had 73 va­cant and 55 filled.

Va­can­cies in­clud­ed for the po­si­tions of deputy DPP (two), As­sis­tant DPP (4), 13 se­nior state coun­sel posts, 12 state coun­sel (three), 38 state coun­sel (two) and five state coun­sel (one).

“It doesn’t take a lawyer or At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to say if you have 73 posts not filled you have a prob­lem. Un­less we re­source that of­fice prop­er­ly, we’re spin­ning top in mud,” Ramdeen said, call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to fill the 73 va­cant posts.

He said it would be an ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty if laws were be­ing passed and the most im­por­tant of­fice to do the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al work was un­der­staffed.

Ramdeen point­ed out that Gov­ern­ment would soon be asked by in­ter­na­tion­al as­ses­sors if any­one had been pros­e­cut­ed for ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing or mon­ey laun­der­ing

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi apol­o­gised to Sen­a­tors for meet­ing yes­ter­day—af­ter the Sen­ate al­so met on Tues­day—say­ing in­ter­na­tion­al as­ses­sors had on­ly just brought as­pects of the bill to be dealt with and T&T’s po­si­tion on this bill and oth­ers, such as the In­come Tax Amend­ment Bill, would be eval­u­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 4.