The Ju­di­cia­ry is ad­vis­ing that all courts around the coun­try are closed to­day, to fa­cil­i­tate the re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of its op­er­a­tions, in light of the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the Ju­di­cia­ry says de­tails on the new op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures for courts will be made avail­able on Tues­day 31 March 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ju­di­cia­ry, the new op­er­at­ing pro­to­cols will al­low judges, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and oth­er em­ploy­ees to work re­mote­ly, and en­sure the con­tin­ued smooth func­tion­ing of the jus­tice sys­tem.

The full text of the Ju­di­cia­ry’s state­ment, fol­lows…

TEM­PO­RARY CLO­SURE OF COURTS 

The Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go is deal­ing with a con­stant­ly evolv­ing en­vi­ron­ment cre­at­ed by the COVID-19 virus and its ef­fects.  This is a very flu­id sit­u­a­tion and we con­tin­ue to re­vis­it our Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity Plan in light of the pan­dem­ic.

We are there­fore putting in place mea­sures to en­able Judges, Ju­di­cial Of­fi­cers and Staff to work re­mote­ly where pos­si­ble, to en­sure con­tin­ued ac­cess to the Courts for ur­gent ap­pli­ca­tions and hear­ings dur­ing the emer­gency pe­ri­od.  

The Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go is com­mit­ted to do­ing every­thing nec­es­sary to en­sure con­tin­ued ac­cess to jus­tice and to keep­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry func­tion­ing while pro­tect­ing our staff and our publics.

To this end, all Court lo­ca­tions will be closed tem­porar­i­ly from March 27, 2020 as we re­con­fig­ure our op­er­a­tions.

Fur­ther guid­ance will be pro­vid­ed on Tues­day March 31, 2020.

For in­for­ma­tion or queries, kind­ly con­tact: 

Tele­phone: 224-5182

E-mail: cpim@tt­law­courts.org