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Monday, February 24, 2025

Paray: Judicial officers need training

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154 days ago
20240922
Mayaro MP Rushton Paray makes his contribution to the debate on the Civil Division Bill, 2024 in Parliament on Friday.

Mayaro MP Rushton Paray makes his contribution to the debate on the Civil Division Bill, 2024 in Parliament on Friday.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray is call­ing for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Ju­di­cial Over­sight Com­mit­tee to mon­i­tor the as­sign­ment of judges and en­sure trans­paren­cy.

Speak­ing dur­ing a de­bate of the Civ­il Di­vi­sion Bill, 2024, Paray said, “Ac­count­abil­i­ty is key to main­tain­ing pub­lic trust in our le­gal sys­tem. An in­de­pen­dent body will en­sure fair­ness in the al­lo­ca­tion of ju­di­cial re­sources.”

Paray said a crit­i­cal as­pect of this re­form is spe­cialised train­ing for judges and court staff.

“Judges need to be equipped with the nec­es­sary skills to man­age cas­es ef­fec­tive­ly with­in their re­spec­tive di­vi­sions,” he said. “With­out prop­er train­ing, we risk un­der­min­ing the very re­forms we seek to im­ple­ment.”

Not­ing that the Bill al­lows for elec­tron­ic hear­ings, which could rev­o­lu­tionise the court sys­tem, Paray warned that ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy is a con­cern for many cit­i­zens and it was im­por­tant to con­sid­er how to in­clude every­one, es­pe­cial­ly those in rur­al ar­eas or with lim­it­ed re­sources.

“In­cor­po­rat­ing dig­i­tal in­clu­sion pro­vi­sions will help bridge this gap,” he said

Paray al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the ex­clu­sion of cer­tain claims, such as defama­tion, from small claims courts. He said this could dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect low-in­come in­di­vid­u­als who may not have the means to pur­sue cas­es in high­er courts.

“We need to en­sure that vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions have ac­cess to jus­tice with­out fac­ing ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial bur­dens. Ex­tend­ing the ju­ris­dic­tion of small claims courts to ac­com­mo­date small-val­ue defama­tion cas­es would be a step in the right di­rec­tion,” he said

Paray said the pro­posed fi­nan­cial lim­its in Small Claims Courts could al­so act as a bar­ri­er as “in­di­vid­u­als with claims ex­ceed­ing these lim­its might be dis­cour­aged from seek­ing jus­tice.” This could cre­ate in­equities with­in the sys­tem, he said.

“It is cru­cial to re­assess these lim­its to en­sure that every­one has a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to seek re­dress. We should ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of waiv­ing fees for low-in­come claimants to fur­ther pro­mote ac­cess,” he sug­gest­ed

Stress­ing the im­por­tance of pub­lic le­gal ed­u­ca­tion, the Ma­yaro MP rec­om­mend­ed aware­ness cam­paigns to help cit­i­zens un­der­stand the new struc­tures and process­es with­in the civ­il jus­tice sys­tem.

“We must en­sure that the pub­lic is in­formed about their rights and the av­enues avail­able to them,” he said. “This should be a pri­or­i­ty in our out­reach ef­forts.”

The new Bill in­tro­duces three main com­po­nents: Civ­il Courts, Small Claims Courts, and an Es­tates Ad­min­is­tra­tion Of­fice, each de­signed to han­dle spe­cif­ic types of cas­es, to re­duce the back­log in the High Court.

Paray said the es­tab­lish­ment of these courts would fa­cil­i­tate more ef­fi­cient pro­cess­ing of civ­il mat­ters and al­low for quick­er res­o­lu­tions.


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