Gail Alexan­der

Leg­isla­tive changes be­ing made will al­low peo­ple to use courts any­where in T&T - rather than a par­tic­u­lar mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­trict - to han­dle mat­ters like traf­fic tick­et pay­ments, liquor li­cences ap­pli­ca­tions and oth­er is­sues.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi in­di­cat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day pi­lot­ing a mis­cel­la­neous pack­age of amend­ments to 36 pieces of law.

Amend­ments in­clude a clause to pro­vide for the cen­tral­iza­tion of mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­tricts in T&T. Al Rawi said go­ing for­ward there would be on­ly three lo­ca­tions in North and South Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“It means you’d no longer have to go to a mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­trict to pay a traf­fic tick­et. If you lived in To­ba­go but were in Rio Claro, you’d pre­vi­ous­ly have had to re­turn to To­ba­go to pay the tick­et. But now you’ll be able to use court lo­ca­tions any­where to pay,“ he said.

He said the sit­u­a­tion in fu­ture would al­so ap­ply to courts deal­ing with guns and fraud mat­ters.

The bill al­so al­lows the Chief Jus­tice to trans­fer cas­es from one court lo­ca­tion to an­oth­er, des­ig­nate a court lo­ca­tion for the hear­ing of spe­cif­ic types of cas­es by a sum­ma­ry court and as­sign mag­is­trates to more than one court lo­ca­tion.

Al Rawi said this was be­ing done to ex­pe­dite cas­es.

The CJ will al­so be au­tho­rised - rather than the Chief Mag­is­trate - to ap­point a mem­ber of the ju­di­cia­ry to the Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal Tri­bunal. Al Rawi said the CJ had bet­ter ju­ris­dic­tion to man­age those who site on the tri­bunal, rather than the Chief Mag­is­trate.

Al Rawi said there are now 3,000 mat­ters be­fore video con­fer­enc­ing courts at pris­ons, "sav­ing $25m a year in pris­on­ers’ trans­port."

He said the bill al­so al­lows for bonds is­sued un­der sec­tion 47A to be tax­able or non-tax­able.

The bill will al­so cre­ate a De­fence Force Air Guard Wing and fa­cil­i­tates the ap­point­ment of a Vice Chief of De­fence Staff, from among De­fence Force com­mis­sioned of­fi­cers.

It al­so pro­vides for the ex­ten­sion of the pe­ri­od to pay fees in re­spect of the grant of a firearms li­cence /cer­tifi­cate.

The Bill pro­pos­es con­di­tions for the yacht­ing in­dus­try, Al Rawi said many ves­sels are com­ing to TT’s hur­ri­cane-free zone and while ves­sels aren’t be­ing al­lowed in yet- due to COVID pro­to­cols - “we’re knock­ing on the door and must be ready (for them)."

The bill al­so em­pow­ers a Jus­tice of the Peace to is­sue a war­rant to seize coun­ter­feit coins and coin­ing tools.