Sascha Wil­son  

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Ju­di­cia­ry is be­ing called up­on to find al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tions to re­sume phys­i­cal civ­il and crim­i­nal tri­als in south Trinidad.

Speak­ing at the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) Christ­mas Din­ner on Sat­ur­day at Paria Suites Ho­tel in La Ro­main, ASL pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan said she had been lob­by­ing for the Ju­di­cia­ry to pro­vide al­ter­nate and more courts in San Fer­nan­do since the clo­sure of the San Fer­nan­do High Court build­ing. 

She said lit­i­gants were at a dis­ad­van­tage, es­pe­cial­ly el­der­ly lit­i­gants, who may not know how to use a com­put­er.

While phys­i­cal tri­als are be­ing held at the Wa­ter­front Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, she said it was dif­fi­cult to get ear­ly tri­al dates as it ser­viced North, Cen­tral and South lit­i­gants.

“So the re­al­i­ty is the San Fer­nan­do Court has been closed, and there have been no fre­quent up­dates from the Ju­di­cia­ry with trans­par­ent or open up­dates as to when that court would be re­opened and in terms of whether an al­ter­nate court could be used, and no oth­er arrange­ments were made.”

She said the Ju­di­cia­ry could have used the op­tion of rent­ing a build­ing tem­porar­i­ly and out­fit­ting it to have a court, or the Princes Town courts could have been used to have civ­il tri­als.

Adding that many South prac­ti­tion­ers were un­hap­py with this sit­u­a­tion, she said, “So it is un­for­tu­nate that af­ter hav­ing such a long pe­ri­od while the rest of the Caribbean, the East­ern Caribbean has opened up and has full in-per­son court again or in-per­son hear­ings that we can’t have the same in San Fer­nan­do or south of the Ca­roni bridge.”

Al­though they were hap­py with the vir­tu­al hear­ing for case man­age­ment con­fer­ences and the con­ve­nience of not hav­ing to trav­el to court, she said the in­tegri­ty of tri­als was ques­tion­able as the cam­era would not al­ways cap­ture the en­tire room, so they could not be en­tire­ly cer­tain if wit­ness­es were be­ing prompt­ed or if prop­er court rules were be­ing fol­lowed.

Call­ing for an­swers from the Ju­di­cia­ry, she said cit­i­zens de­serve to know when the courts will be opened.

“We are call­ing up­on not just the Ju­di­cia­ry to pro­vide an­swers but the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to act on be­half of all lawyers in T&T and to fol­low up with hav­ing in-per­son tri­als re­sumed in San Fer­nan­do.”

For­mer ASL pres­i­dent Michael Rooplal said the three court­rooms used for tri­als in South mat­ters were in­suf­fi­cient and ac­cused peo­ple were get­ting tri­al dates in 2026 and be­yond.

Rooplal ex­plained that his clients had been await­ing tri­al for 20 years, and a week be­fore the tri­al was sup­posed to start in March, he got an email from the judge’s team in­di­cat­ing that an­oth­er judge was us­ing the court­room.

Their mat­ter was ad­journed to this month, which was the ear­li­est date avail­able. 

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said, the old San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court build­ing was bro­ken down, and a dis­trict court was sup­posed to have been built and opened two years ago, but work had stopped on the build­ing.

Dur­ing his five-year tenure as ASL pres­i­dent, he said, he wrote re­li­gious­ly to the Chief Jus­tice on these mat­ters but nev­er re­ceived an of­fi­cial re­sponse.

Guardian Me­dia re­quest­ed a re­sponse from the Ju­di­cia­ry via email.