Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A ma­jor shift is un­der­way in the cor­ri­dors of the in­dus­tri­al court.

For­mer Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh, labour stal­wart Sel­wyn Sama­roo, and ex-mag­is­trate Bramb­hanan Dubay are step­ping in­to the roles pre­vi­ous­ly held by judges Vin­cent Cabr­era, Lawrence Achong, and Wendy Ali.

The new judges will re­ceive their ap­point­ments to­day.

In­dars­ingh and Sama­roo will pre­side over mat­ters in the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, which han­dles dis­putes af­fect­ing the civ­il ser­vice, po­lice, fire and prison ser­vices. Dubay takes on the broad­er re­mit of the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.

Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) and civ­il ser­vice bod­ies, have high­light­ed deep­er un­ease with the state of the in­dus­tri­al court.

At the cen­tre of that un­ease is Judge Lar­ry Achong, the out­go­ing chair­man of the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and head of the Spe­cial Tri­bunal. The JTUM has long raised con­cerns about his per­ceived par­tial­i­ty, call­ing for his re­moval not on­ly on pro­ce­dur­al grounds but out of a con­vic­tion that his con­tin­ued pres­ence un­der­cut the in­tegri­ty of jus­tice.

That ten­sion grew when Achong re­ceived a six-month ex­ten­sion to his term, grant­ed by the Pres­i­dent af­ter court-pres­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion. Unions ar­gue that such ex­ten­sions de­lay new hear­ings and leave es­sen­tial mat­ters in lim­bo.

Unions and le­gal com­men­ta­tors ar­gue that Cab­i­net’s pow­er to dic­tate ap­point­ments and to re­scind or ex­tend terms at will threat­ens im­par­tial­i­ty.