Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) says it wel­comes sev­er­al jus­tice-re­lat­ed mea­sures an­nounced in the 2025/2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get, de­scrib­ing them as pos­i­tive steps to­ward im­prov­ing ac­cess to jus­tice.

But is not say­ing whether or not it is un­hap­py with pro­posed cre­ation of a Ju­di­cia­ry Chan­cel­lor.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day a day af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, LATT said it was “pleased” by the pro­posed ex­pan­sion of court fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­agua­nas, Rio Claro, San­gre Grande and Diego Mar­tin.

“We greet this ini­tia­tive with open arms and be­lieve that it takes us a step clos­er to clos­ing the ac­cess to jus­tice gap for mem­bers of the le­gal pro­fes­sion and the pub­lic,” the LATT said.

It al­so com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing key crim­i­nal jus­tice in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment. It fur­ther wel­comed plans to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to en­shrine a right to a time­ly tri­al.

“The pro­posed amend­ment would hope­ful­ly en­sure that mem­bers of the pub­lic have ac­cess to jus­tice in a more time­ly and fair man­ner,” the state­ment read.

The LATT al­so praised the gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to ex­pand vic­tim sup­port ser­vices to in­clude resti­tu­tion pro­grammes, job place­ment as­sis­tance and hous­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for vic­tims of crime. “

How­ev­er, it said it would re­serve com­ment on the pro­posed cre­ation of a new post of Ju­di­cia­ry Chan­cel­lor un­til more de­tails are pro­vid­ed.

Mean­while, head of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA) Is­rael Khan, SC, said he wel­comes the plans an­nounced in Mon­day’s Bud­get for the ju­di­cia­ry and calls for them to be im­ple­ment­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Khan thanked the Gov­ern­ment for de­liv­er­ing a Bud­get, which he claimed un­der­scored the sig­nif­i­cance of fix­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to the coun­try’s democ­ra­cy.

Khan said: “The CBA sug­gests that a prop­er fi­nan­cial pack­age should be giv­en to the ad­vo­cates at the DPP and ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty af­ford­ed to them. Af­ter all, they put their lives on the line in pros­e­cut­ing crim­i­nals. The Gov­ern­ment has sig­naled to the coun­try its in­ten­tion to guar­an­tee to ac­cused per­sons the Con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a speedy tri­al, and this is good news for the CBA.”

Khan said he hopes this would mean that mur­der ac­cused would not be forced to spend ten to 15 years be­fore re­ceiv­ing a tri­al.

“It is a mock­ery against the sa­cred pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence. All in all, it seems that this Gov­ern­ment is on the right track in its ef­fort to sal­vage the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Sys­tem from com­plete­ly col­laps­ing.”

Khan al­so took time to praise the work of Chief Pub­lic De­fend­er Ha­sine Shaikh SC, as he high­light­ed Tan­coo’s plans to strength­en the Pub­lic De­fend­ers De­part­ment.