RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

New­ly-ap­point­ed chair­man of the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion (LRC) Sam­raj Har­ri­paul says more than 100 un­fin­ished "projects" are ly­ing around in the com­mis­sion. He said the new com­mis­sion's fo­cus was to com­plete those projects from the last eight to ten years. He said for years the com­mis­sion had been very in­ac­tive. Har­ri­paul was speak­ing in an in­ter­view af­ter he and sev­en oth­ers re­ceived their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Two mem­bers were ab­sent. Har­ri­paul served as le­gal ad­vis­er to for­mer AG John Je­re­mie and was the le­gal drafts­man for the Po­lice Ser­vice Re­form Task Force. He said among some of the "projects" were street vend­ing, pre­sump­tion of death, laws gov­ern­ing pri­va­cy, pro­pos­al for a hu­man rights court, land/ten­ant rental, re­form of cred­it unions, sedi­tion, bail re­form, le­gal aid and draft leg­is­la­tion for phar­ma­cies and re­al es­tate agents. Har­ri­paul said he want­ed to li­aise with his board elec­tron­i­cal­ly and on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to ex­pe­dite those out­stand­ing mat­ters.

Mean­while, Ram­lo­gan urged the new mem­bers to pay close at­ten­tion to is­sues of cy­ber crime, In­ter­net fraud and the mis­use of tech­nol­o­gy in the crim­i­nal are­na. He said: "The Law Re­form Com­mis­sion is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in law to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment by re­view­ing the pol­i­cy, laws - all laws, com­mon law and statute - and al­so to come up and to cre­ate new pol­i­cy and to ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment on where we should take our leg­is­la­tion and our leg­isla­tive agen­da." Ram­lo­gan said when he served as a law com­mis­sion­er un­der Karl Hud­son-Phillips QC, he found it to be "en­joy­able." He said it was good to be part of the law-mak­ing process as op­posed to be­ing in court and ap­ply­ing the law which some­one else made.

New Board

• Sam­raj Har­ri­paul (chair­man),

• Pamela El­der SC (deputy chair­man),

• Jawara Mob­o­ta,

• Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er,

• Sophia Chote,

• Jagdeo Singh,

• Wayne Sturge,

• Lemuel Mur­phy,

• Avory Sinanan SC

• Sylesh Ram­jat­tan.