Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Jus­tices of the Peace (JPs) need recog­ni­tion for their ded­i­ca­tion to so­ci­ety.

Pres­i­dent of the Jus­tice of the Peace As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Jopatt) Daniel Bis­nath said Gov­ern­ment should recog­nise JPs who will­ing­ly serve so­ci­ety and per­form their du­ties with dis­tinc­tion. He said they were looked up­on with re­spect by mem­bers of their com­mu­ni­ties. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Bis­nath said the as­so­ci­a­tion wel­comed the ini­tia­tive by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan for JPs to be re­im­bursed for their trav­el and meal ex­pens­es up to and not ex­ceed­ing $1,500 a month.

Ram­lo­gan was the fea­ture speak­er at Jopatt's awards cer­e­mo­ny and mag­a­zine launch on Sat­ur­day at Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain. He told them they would re­ceive the re­im­burse­ment in ac­cor­dance with ex­ist­ing Pub­lic Ser­vice guide­lines. He added: "This is a mat­ter that the stand­ing com­mit­tee will be look­ing in­to when it con­venes and you will be ac­cord­ing­ly ad­vised. "This Gov­ern­ment in­tends to take a crit­i­cal re­view of all these rec­om­men­da­tions with a view to en­hanc­ing the sys­tem in which you as JPs op­er­ate."

Daniel, how­ev­er, said while the as­so­ci­a­tion was pleased about the ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion, "$1,000 is a small amount." He said: "$1,000 is def­i­nite­ly not suf­fi­cient con­sid­er­ing the many tasks per­formed by a JP. "Peo­ple come to our homes at all hours of the day and night and we make our­selves avail­able to them. "When peo­ple come to us seek­ing our ser­vices they don't pay us." Daniel said when peo­ple de­cid­ed to serve as JPs their lives were no longer theirs.

The Jopatt was es­tab­lished in 1993. Cur­rent­ly there are about 150 JPs and about 70 are mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion. An en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, Daniel said there were JPs who de­pend­ed on the stipend to sup­port them­selves. "Some are re­tirees while some are em­ployed but when you con­sid­er we use our time, our pa­per, our com­put­ers, ink and oth­er sta­tionery, that sum can­not com­pen­sate us for what we do," Daniel added.