Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on the re­form of the Con­sti­tu­tion will be­gin across the coun­try next month.

This was re­vealed by Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har in a state­ment in re­sponse to yes­ter­day's T&T Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al, un­der the head­line "Still await­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form." Ra­mad­har is in­sist­ing that re­form of the Con­sti­tu­tion is very much a pri­or­i­ty mat­ter for the Gov­ern­ment. He said the Gov­ern­ment was in the process of de­liv­er­ing its promise to re­form the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Ra­mad­har, who is al­so the leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), said of­fi­cials at his min­istry had been "work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly over the past few months" plan­ning the na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions which are now at an ad­vanced stage. He said the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions would be wide­spread and in­clu­sive and there will be 14 in Trinidad and three in To­ba­go.

They will be launched on March 2, and run from March 4, to April 17. Fol­low­ing the de­lib­er­a­tions, the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered will be "com­plied, col­lat­ed and as­sim­i­lat­ed by the com­mis­sion­ers and their team," Ra­mad­har said.