DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A young cou­ple ex­changed mar­i­tal vows at Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle yes­ter­day as the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs hand­ed out 36 cer­tifi­cates to new­ly ap­point­ed mar­riage of­fi­cers, mark­ing what the Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward clear­ing a years-long ad­min­is­tra­tive back­log.

Dar­ryl Saun­ders and Ri­han­na John, who re­cent­ly wel­comed their two-week-old daugh­ter Jazmyn, were in­vit­ed by the min­istry to hold their cer­e­mo­ny at the his­toric venue in­stead of the usu­al of­fice set­ting. They shared their first dance to Christi­na Per­ri’s “A Thou­sand Years” per­formed by vi­o­lin­ist Sachin Boodram, with the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al of­fi­ci­at­ing.

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said the ap­point­ment of the new of­fi­cers rep­re­sents the first ma­jor ef­fort to re­duce de­lays that have kept some ap­pli­cants wait­ing up to 10 years. Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, he crit­i­cised the en­trenched red tape across state agen­cies and not­ed that sev­er­al re­li­gious bod­ies had com­plained that li­cens­ing gaps left cou­ples un­able to have wed­dings of­fi­ci­at­ed by their pre­ferred priests, imams or pun­dits.

He an­nounced that the min­istry is tran­si­tion­ing to a ful­ly dig­i­tal sys­tem for mar­riage of­fi­cer ap­pli­ca­tions, reg­is­tra­tions and cer­tifi­cates, re­plac­ing the man­u­al process in which pa­per files are moved be­tween the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al. Ho­sein said ap­provals should even­tu­al­ly take less than 30 days.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly test­ing the apps and so on for the elec­tron­ic reg­is­tra­tion of mar­riages, elec­tron­ic ap­pli­ca­tions for mar­riage of­fi­cers and so on. And every year they have to re­new, and you would imag­ine that they have to go and pay in one place, get a phys­i­cal re­ceipt, bring it back by us, get their books and so on. I mean, we’re liv­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry now. That has to stop. Let’s go dig­i­tal.”

Ho­sein said more than 200 ap­pli­ca­tions re­main in the queue, with ad­di­tion­al back­logs for jus­tices of the peace and com­mis­sion­ers of af­fi­davits. He added that those de­lays are al­so tied to pa­per-based sys­tems, but ex­pects speed­i­er pro­cess­ing now that digi­ti­sa­tion is un­der­way.

“Now that we have the sys­tem in place, we can get it done in very short or­der. I in­tend, as min­is­ter, to en­sure that every month we try to get some of the ap­pli­ca­tions signed off be­cause it’s a process. It has to be gazetted. They have to get vet­ting by the Spe­cial Branch and so on. So, it takes some time in terms of the back­ground in­for­ma­tion, but I’m giv­ing a com­mit­ment that we’re go­ing to try to get as much out on a month­ly ba­sis go­ing for­ward. I would like it to be less than 30 days.”

Mean­while, Ho­sein urged the new­ly ap­point­ed mar­riage of­fi­cers to coun­sel cou­ples and pay close at­ten­tion to signs of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, which he stressed re­mains a ma­jor na­tion­al con­cern.

“There’s a se­ri­ous is­sue with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. I want you all to take that role very crit­i­cal­ly and en­sure that you coun­sel your cou­ples be­fore they get mar­ried, dur­ing the mar­riage, and even af­ter the mar­riage, if that hap­pens. If that hap­pens, they used to come by me in my for­mer ca­pac­i­ty as a lawyer. So I hope none of that hap­pens.”

He fur­ther urged them to up­hold the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with ded­i­ca­tion and in­tegri­ty.