Resh­ma Ra­goonath

For­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day on Mon­day said he will with­hold his ser­vices in a le­gal aid case un­til Par­lia­ment pass­es an amend­ment to in­crease fees un­der the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Act.Pan­day, who was ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent mur­der ac­cused Mur­ray Joseph Forde, ex­pressed his po­si­tion when he ap­peared be­fore San Fer­nan­do Sec­ond As­sizes Judge De­van Ram­per­sad."I have a slight dif­fi­cul­ty to stand in this mat­ter pri­or to the pass­ing of the Le­gal Aid amend­ment bill. Par­lia­ment is not sit­ting but the Chair­man of the Le­gal Aid Au­thor­i­ty (Chat­er­am Sinanan) who is seat­ed in court, in­di­cates that the bill will be passed by the end of Oc­to­ber," Pan­day said.He al­so ex­pressed sup­port for Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie's state­ment that ju­di­cial of­fi­cers' com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages are over­due for re­view by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC).

Pan­day said: "I stand with the CJ on bet­ter re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages for le­gal of­fi­cers."The for­mer min­is­ter added, "We stand with the judges in their quest for jus­tice."Ram­per­sad agreed to ad­journ the case to No­vem­ber 8 for tri­al.Forde, 51, of Rio Claro, was charged by Sgt Ce­les­tine Phillip for the mur­der An­nette Sawh, 38, be­tween Feb­ru­ary 11 and 14, 2002, at Table­land. Sawh went miss­ing on Feb­ru­ary 11, a Car­ni­val Mon­day. Her de­com­pos­ing body was dis­cov­ered by a search par­ty on Ash Wednes­day morn­ing in a bushy area off No­har Road, Table­land.When con­tact­ed for com­ment on the le­gal aid sit­u­a­tion, Sinanan said he was in a meet­ing and could not speak.