Mem­bers of the pub­lic who were in­con­ve­nienced by a protest from Ju­di­cia­ry work­ers on Mon­day had to face sim­i­lar is­sues yes­ter­day, as pub­lic ser­vants ex­tend­ed their protest to a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day.

While yes­ter­day’s ac­tion at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er par­tic­i­pants than Mon­day and was con­fined main­ly to the coun­try’s mag­is­trates’ courts, it still led to hun­dreds of cit­i­zens hav­ing to wait longer than usu­al to com­plete their busi­ness.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, the ma­jor­i­ty of note-tak­ers who as­sist mag­is­trates stayed away from work. Their ab­sence meant mag­is­trates were forced to take their own notes and sift through their case files them­selves. This trans­lat­ed in­to au­to­mat­ic de­lays for per­sons reap­pear­ing be­fore them, as well as for those mak­ing their first court ap­pear­ance. The de­lays were al­so felt by mem­bers of the pub­lic seek­ing ap­proval of bail, as some ad­min­is­tra­tive staff work­ing in that de­part­ment were al­so ab­sent.

But it was busi­ness as usu­al at the Hall of Jus­tice, with most court­rooms oc­cu­pied by judges and staff who had to deal with the sched­uled case-load as well as cas­es that were ad­journed due to Mon­day’s protest ac­tion.

The protest ac­tion stems from a move by the Ju­di­cia­ry to give ef­fect to sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion which were re­cent­ly en­act­ed to help re­duce back­logs in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as the work­ers be­lieve many of them will lose their jobs.

In a press re­lease is­sued last week, how­ev­er, the Ju­di­cia­ry claimed the on­ly jobs be­ing made re­dun­dant un­der the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion and Dis­trict Crim­i­nal and Traf­fic Courts Act are those of clerk of the peace and as­sis­tant clerks of the peace. But it claimed those cur­rent­ly hold­ing the po­si­tions would not be tech­ni­cal­ly los­ing their jobs as they all hold act­ing ap­point­ments. The Ju­di­cia­ry al­so said it was of­fer­ing free train­ing to those mem­bers of staff will­ing to ap­ply for the new po­si­tions of dis­trict clerks of the peace and case man­age­ment of­fi­cers.

In a brief in­ter­view at the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion’s head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke de­scribed the sec­ond protest as suc­cess­ful. Duke, who en­cour­aged pub­lic ser­vants work­ing in the Ju­di­cia­ry to en­gage in the “Day of Jus­tice,” did not com­ment ex­ten­sive­ly as he said fur­ther ac­tion was be­ing planned for next week.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi mean­while weighed in on the is­sue in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries on is­sues in the ju­di­cia­ry and the re­struc­tur­ing, Al-Rawi said no one from the ju­di­cia­ry will be dis­missed.

“I con­demn the pan­ic that’s be­ing put out by a politi­cian wear­ing the hat of PSA pres­i­dent,” Al-Rawi added as he slammed Duke.

The AG said the pro­posed ex­pan­sion of the ju­di­cia­ry’s crim­i­nal di­vi­sion will cre­ate a num­ber of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and will “ben­e­fit cit­i­zens.” He said the PSA will be ful­ly en­gaged in the mat­ter.

“Co­pi­ous doc­u­ments were pro­vid­ed. It’s a fact of law that peo­ple whom PSA rep­re­sents can’t be dis­missed and they must be placed else­where in the pub­lic ser­vice if that were to be the case. It’s (changes) an ex­pan­sion of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the PSA has been prop­er­ly, ful­ly con­sult­ed.”