A lack of in­spec­tors at the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA) was iden­ti­fied as the main rea­son why mag­is­trate’s courts have failed to be prop­er­ly in­spect­ed.

This was dis­closed by Car­olyn San­cho ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of OS­HA dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of the Par­lia­ment Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs in­quiry in­to the ad­e­qua­cy of Mag­is­trates’ Courts fa­cil­i­ties.

San­cho said over the years there has been a se­ri­ous staffing is­sue in terms of the num­ber of in­spec­tors they would have avail­able to in­spect cer­tain places.

She said, “Un­til re­cent­ly we on­ly had 16 so we had to then try to deal with high­er risk busi­ness­es rather than go to the Ju­di­cia­ry.”

“With the Ju­di­cia­ry we have had to seek per­mis­sion to get in­to those ar­eas and un­less we see that there is some­thing im­mi­nent­ly dan­ger­ous that’s the on­ly time we will seek to shut down any build­ing be­cause of the na­ture of the Ju­di­cia­ry busi­ness and the domi­no ef­fect it has be­fore we shut down a cour­t­house. If there is a shut­down, mat­ters would not be able to be heard be­cause then we would have a back­up with­in the court sys­tem so we try our best to see how we can help to im­prove what­ev­er the con­di­tions are with­out shut­ting down the build­ing,” San­cho added.

She said they now have fund­ing to get more in­spec­tors up to a min­i­mum of 29 In­spec­tor 1s, “We al­so have to fill our In­spec­tor 2 po­si­tions and al­so se­nior in­spec­tor po­si­tions as well. We still have va­can­cies and we have put an ad out in May and we are look­ing to fill the po­si­tions be­tween now and next fi­nan­cial year.”

San­cho how­ev­er as­sured that they would help them in get­ting to that place of com­pli­ance es­pe­cial­ly in the cas­es where the build­ings are very old.

OS­HA’s Chief In­spec­tor Ar­lene John-Se­ow said in­spec­tions at the 26 fa­cil­i­ties un­der the purview of the Mag­is­trates courts have been com­plet­ed as well as oth­er ju­di­cia­ry build­ings.

She not­ed that when they do their com­pli­ance ex­er­cis­es they will iden­ti­fy non-con­for­mance with the act and is­sue the rel­e­vant im­prove­ment no­tices to the var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties un­der the Ju­di­cia­ry.

She dis­closed that cur­rent­ly the OS­HA team and the Ju­di­cia­ry are in con­tact and they are cur­rent­ly de­vel­op­ing a sched­ule based on the op­er­a­tions of the mag­is­trate’s courts and the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the op­er­a­tions, “So with­in mid-Ju­ly we are hop­ing to com­mence that pro­gramme.”