Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har says he is forced to seek al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tions for the re­lo­ca­tion of the San Fer­nan­do Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al's De­part­ment since the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Chancery Lane com­plex re­mains in­com­plete.

Ra­mad­har made the state­ment on Mon­day while speak­ing with re­porters af­ter a tour of a new build­ing on Har­ris Street which cur­rent­ly hous­es the law cham­bers of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. The Chancery Lane com­plex, which was start­ed un­der the for­mer PNM-run Gov­ern­ment, was be­ing con­struct­ed in a bid to have all Gov­ern­ment of­fices housed in one build­ing. How­ev­er, the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar com­plex has been stalled. On Mon­day, Ra­mad­har, to­geth­er with Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Jairam Seemu­n­gal and Le­gal Af­fairs per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Bernard Sylvester, toured the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al's De­part­ment, Leo­taud Street, San Fer­nan­do, and the Dis­trict Reg­is­trar's Of­fice, San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

"The Chancery Lane com­plex," Ra­mad­har said, "is a pre­ferred lo­ca­tion but we can­not at this point in time get any cer­tain date as to com­ple­tion on that. "We know of the ter­ri­ble cost over­runs on that and we will be mak­ing cer­tain in­quiries in­to that as a new board is put in place at Ude­cott." He said once Ude­cott was hand­ed over and its op­er­a­tions trans­ferred to the new board "we would be in a bet­ter po­si­tion" to deal with the com­plex. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter lament­ed that an im­prove­ment of the con­di­tions at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al's De­part­ment and the Dis­trict Reg­is­trar's Of­fice were "an im­me­di­ate need." That, he said, was "why we have tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to find an al­ter­na­tive (build­ing) even if it is in the short term." The tour, Ra­mad­har said, was based on nu­mer­ous com­plaints made from mem­bers of the pub­lic.

He said the com­plaints were that the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al's De­part­ment was faced with "over­crowd­ing and the cramped con­di­tions, not on­ly for the staff but, cer­tain­ly, for the mem­bers of the pub­lic who have been kept out in tents in the abysmal heat and ter­ri­ble weath­er con­di­tions." He said: "This is some­thing that we want to look for­ward to im­prov­ing im­me­di­ate­ly." Ra­mad­har said the con­di­tions at the Dis­trict Reg­is­trar's Of­fice, which reg­is­ters births and deaths, "are atro­cious in terms of ac­com­mo­da­tion and some of the sys­tems in place need to be mod­i­fied to fa­cil­i­tate a less painful ef­fort to get ba­bies reg­is­tered and death reg­is­tered." The min­is­ter re­mained tightlipped on his min­istry's bud­get al­lo­ca­tion ex­pec­ta­tions.