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Monday, July 14, 2025

Lucky fights proposed clause in PCA Act

...says moves afoot to put au­thor­i­ty un­der min­is­ter

by

20120927

On the heels of the re­peal of the con­tro­ver­sial Clause 34 leg­is­la­tion, comes the rev­e­la­tion that the Gov­ern­ment is propos­ing to amend the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Act, which could give the line min­is­ter in­flu­ence over it, which could con­tribute to the ero­sion of its in­de­pen­dence. This comes from PCA di­rec­tor Gillian Lucky, who de­scribed the pro­pos­al as "ob­jec­tion­able" and vowed to chal­lenge it, all the way to the Privy Coun­cil or the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ). Ad­dress­ing an au­di­ence in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day night, Lucky called on all con­sci­en­tious cit­i­zens to help pre­vent the amend­ment from be­com­ing law, rather than be­com­ing re­ac­tionary, af­ter the fact.

Speak­ing at pub­lic out­reach meet­ing of the PCA at City Hall, San Fer­nan­do, be­fore an au­di­ence which in­clud­ed Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, un­der whose port­fo­lio the or­gan­i­sa­tion falls, Lucky said she want­ed to place her con­cern on record. "There is a clause be­ing bandied about, to go to the Par­lia­ment in a bill, that would sug­gest that the min­is­ter is re­spon­si­ble for the PCA, and I want to make it clear, there is no min­is­ter who is re­spon­si­ble for the PCA," she said. "There is a min­is­ter who is a con­duit, but there is a move to have a clause which goes against the grain of the sec­tion, al­ready in our act, which means the very pur­pose of the PCA is be­ing un­der­mined."

She em­pha­sised that the PCA is an in­de­pen­dent body. "The act says it is not sub­ject to con­trol or di­rec­tion of any per­son in the per­for­mance of its func­tion or ex­er­cise of pow­ers," Lucky said. "But I want to as­sure you, the PCA can nev­er be a run­away horse, be­cause at the end of the day, we have to ac­count to the Par­lia­ment, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. "What is clear is that there can be no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the op­er­a­tion of the body, and that is some­thing that re­al­ly speaks to in­de­pen­dence in T&T, the abil­i­ty to be ac­count­able and trans­par­ent, with­out any kind of out­side in­flu­ence dic­tat­ing how we op­er­ate." Lucky, who has worked as a judge, ex­pressed con­cern that in­creas­ing­ly, peo­ple in T&T are bent on be­ing tied up in con­tro­ver­sy and go­ing to court to seek re­dress. She said if the pro­posed clause is passed, with or with­out a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, the PCA will chal­lenge it. "We will have to go to court, we will have to go to the Privy Coun­cil or the CCJ," she said.

Lament­ing that T&T has be­come a kind of knee-jerk so­ci­ety, re­act­ing af­ter the fact, Lucky called on cit­i­zens to pre­vent the amend­ment from be­com­ing law. "If we could pre­vent some­thing from hap­pen­ing in this coun­try, why don't we go the way of pre­ven­tion...Pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure," she said. Lucky said she did not want to get in­volved in the pol­i­tics of the is­sue, but at the PCA, she and deputy di­rec­tor Ralph Doyle urge em­ploy­ees not to court dan­ger or get em­broiled in some­thing in which their ac­tion could be chal­lenged. "If you could pre­vent that risk, pre­vent it, ad­here to what is law. Stop the knee-jerk ap­proach, start be­ing a so­ci­ety with vi­sion," she said. Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who in­vit­ed Lucky to the dis­course, not­ed the con­cern. She told Lucky, that she is a strong ad­vo­cate for the in­de­pen­dence of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly es­tab­lished body, but not­ed that there must be col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment agen­cies and such bod­ies.


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