“If you’re in­ter­est­ed in the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, do the work nec­es­sary to fix the sys­tem.”

This was the ad­vice giv­en to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ani­ta Haynes in her con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate on the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) (Amend­ment) (No. 3) Bill, 2019 in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

Haynes crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment for not tak­ing a hands-on ap­proach to treat­ing with prob­lems in the na­tion.

“We have a gov­ern­ment that is on­ly tak­ing a pa­per ap­proach or leg­isla­tive ap­proach to any prob­lem we face. Any prob­lem we’re fac­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go they tell us they passed a piece of leg­is­la­tion and that would fix it,” she said.

Haynes said de­spite these leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives, they are not im­ple­ment­ed. She pre­dict­ed that this would not solve any­thing but in­stead “we would con­stant­ly have the prob­lem and con­stant­ly have the con­ver­sa­tion.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would tell us the time to stop talk­ing is now and we must act, fail­ing to re­alise the ac­tion they are talk­ing about is talk­ing. They are talk­ing about com­ing here to pass leg­is­la­tion and do­ing noth­ing be­yond that.”

Cit­ing the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs’ re­port on crim­i­nal case flow man­age­ment, Haynes said many cit­i­zens do not be­lieve leg­is­la­tion is the fix for the is­sues the Bill seeks to re­solve but in­stead there are “sim­ple pol­i­cy cures that there are ac­tion­able items that can be tak­en now that can as­sist in fix­ing the prob­lem.”