KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er
@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les have wel­comed Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh’s plans to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, with both point­ing to the need to ad­dress re­source con­straints, court de­lays and ac­cess to the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

Speak­ing to the me­dia fol­low­ing the open­ing of the 2026/2027 law term yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the Chief Jus­tice’s pro­pos­als as in­no­v­a­tive and said her Gov­ern­ment would do what it could to sup­port the Ju­di­cia­ry with­in avail­able re­sources.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “On the Chief Jus­tice’s speech, I think very, very in­no­v­a­tive ideas. Some new ideas, new things, and at least he ac­knowl­edged the con­straints of re­sources, so we’ll do the best we can to as­sist. We are ground­ed in the rule of law. We are found­ed in the rule of law, and what­ev­er we can do as an ex­ec­u­tive, we would try to do.”

Beck­les said she was pleased with Boodoos­ingh’s pre­sen­ta­tion of da­ta on the per­for­mance of the courts, par­tic­u­lar­ly his com­par­i­son of the pe­ri­ods be­fore and af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

She de­scribed the de­cline in com­plet­ed mat­ters as alarm­ing, not­ing the Chief Jus­tice had re­ferred to more than 100,000 com­plet­ed mat­ters in an ear­li­er pe­ri­od com­pared with about 10,000 in the Mag­is­trates’ Court in 2025.

How­ev­er, Beck­les said it was im­por­tant that the Chief Jus­tice and the Ju­di­cia­ry recog­nised the chal­lenges fac­ing the court sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly lengthy de­lays ex­pe­ri­enced by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Beck­les al­so wel­comed the dis­cus­sion on vir­tu­al hear­ings but stressed the val­ue of phys­i­cal court ap­pear­ances, par­tic­u­lar­ly for lawyers learn­ing from more se­nior at­tor­neys and in­ter­act­ing with clients.

On court in­fra­struc­ture, Beck­les said it was un­de­sir­able for the Ju­di­cia­ry to be pay­ing rent for the NIPDEC build­ing while it was not be­ing used for the Fam­i­ly Court.

She al­so wel­comed plans to re­turn sev­er­al court fa­cil­i­ties to op­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Ari­ma court, say­ing it was “mu­sic to my ear” to hear that it would be brought back on track.