The im­por­tance of pur­pose-built cour­t­hous­es that could meet the needs of the Ju­di­cia­ry and its cus­tomers was em­pha­sised yes­ter­day as the Ju­di­cia­ry opened a two-day sem­i­nar for its per­son­nel, jus­tice sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er re­lat­ed port­fo­lios.Ad­dress­ing the open­ing ses­sion at the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah Ho­tel, St Ann's, act­ing Chief Jus­tice Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo hailed the in­ter­est and en­thu­si­asm demon­strat­ed by the at­ten­dance at the event.

He said it il­lus­trat­ed a par­tic­u­lar un­der­stand­ing of the need for pur­pose-built cour­t­hous­es which al­lowed the Ju­di­cia­ry to of­fer to all cit­i­zens, ser­vices that met the high­est stan­dards in terms of safe­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.The Ju­di­cia­ry or­gan­ised the event in part­ner­ship with the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for State Courts' In­sti­tute of Court Man­age­ment and in­vit­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of of­fi­cials from the Ac­com­mo­da­tion Sub-Com­mit­tee, In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al/Jus­tice Sec­tor Com­mit­tee which has been es­tab­lished un­der the chair­man­ship of Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

Per­son­nel at­tend­ing were from Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Jus­tice, and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (in­clud­ing the po­lice and pris­ons) Min­istries, of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Util­i­ties, as well as the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion and ar­chi­tec­tur­al firms which had been in ser­vice to the Ju­di­cia­ry.Three court man­age­ment con­sul­tants of the Unit­ed States-based in­sti­tute of court man­age­ment-Jim Mc Mil­lan, Chang-Ming-Yeh and Nathan Hall-are fa­cil­i­tat­ing the ex­er­cise which ends to­day.

Ses­sions yes­ter­day in­clud­ed a vis­it by the work­shop to the St George West Mag­is­trates' Courts, Port-of-Spain.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's open­ing, Kan­ga­loo point­ed out the Ju­di­cia­ry's pre­sen­ta­tion of the sem­i­nar to its part­ners and to crit­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ers with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion was a tes­ta­ment to the Ju­di­cia­ry's com­mit­ment to mod­ernising its court fa­cil­i­ties and mov­ing to the cre­ation of phys­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion and spaces that met the needs of its cus­tomers and all stake­hold­ers.

It was stat­ed that the es­tab­lish­ment was mind­ful, how­ev­er, of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be fi­nan­cial­ly pru­dent in its use of the fund­ing by the State."We as an or­gan­i­sa­tion are com­mit­ted to get­ting val­ue for mon­ey," the act­ing Chief Jus­tice said. He added: "Our cit­i­zens ex­pect noth­ing less. In fact, I put on no­tice all po­ten­tial ser­vice providers, in­clud­ing those among us, that we ad­here strict­ly to this re­quire­ment."Kan­ga­loo said he was con­fi­dent fol­low­ing the sem­i­nar, par­tic­i­pants would leave bet­ter in­formed and able to un­der­take the task of plan­ning and de­sign­ing cour­t­hous­es in T&T with a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the in­ter­na­tion­al norms and stan­dards which ap­plied to those ac­tiv­i­ties.