Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing sev­er­al perks to judges and is re­view­ing cer­tain con­di­tions of their em­ploy­ment in a bid to en­cour­age peo­ple to serve on the bench, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at Gov­ern­ment's week­ly me­dia brief­ing, Ram­lo­gan said the time had come to re­view the sit­u­a­tion of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers to make the po­si­tion more at­trac­tive. He said new jus­tice leg­is­la­tion would see an avalanche of cas­es be­fore the courts, and judges were need­ed. He not­ed the con­di­tion which pre­vent­ed judges from prac­tis­ing for ten years af­ter they have left the bench.

He said this would be re­viewed af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the ju­di­cia­ry, Law As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er sec­tors. Judges and their spous­es will al­so be al­lowed to use the VIP lounge at the air­port and giv­en con­tin­ued use of diplo­mat­ic pass­ports and Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route pass­es. He said Gov­ern­ment will al­so re­view su­per­an­nu­a­tion arrange­ments for judges and com­plete a re­port on them by next month. Ram­lo­gan al­so said the PBX phone sys­tems in the ju­di­cial sec­tor will all be re­placed to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

This will be on a phased ba­sis from North to South and To­ba­go and will be com­plet­ed by 2013. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's brief­ing, Trade Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said the econ­o­my was not as flat as some were mak­ing out. He said there has been in­vest­ment, and not­ed in­stances of pri­vate in­vest­ment up to $90 mil­lion. Cadiz said the up­com­ing Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF) would al­so open up fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vest­ment. CIF vis­i­tors in­clude the Pana­man­ian Pres­i­dent, the Ja­maican Trade Min­is­ter and Cen­tral Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tions.