Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

"Gov­ern­ment should con­cen­trate on putting re­sources to be able to fix the jus­tice sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go."So said for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj dur­ing a work­ers' meet­ing host­ed by Democ­ra­cy Watch, held at the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce of­fice in Cou­va.

On Wednes­day, at a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on prison re­form, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said it cost the State ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25,000 a month to pro­vide for each pris­on­er, which amounts to more than $50 mil­lion a month ($600 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly) for the 2,235 in­mates.

There have been com­plaints about the length of time many pris­on­ers must wait be­fore fac­ing tri­al while en­dur­ing poor con­di­tions in the na­tion's pris­ons.

To re­duce the num­ber of in­mates in cus­tody, among the sug­ges­tions made were de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and oth­er mi­nor of­fences and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a tick­et­ing sys­tem for some of­fences.Lament­ing T&T's in­creas­ing crime sta­tis­tics, Ma­haraj said he could not un­der­stand why Gov­ern­ment was spend­ing so much mon­ey on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty yet could not catch the crim­i­nals.

"We do not have at this time a DNA bank in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be able to match DNA on the scene of a crime, to be able to iden­ti­fy the per­son who com­mits the crime. And we are spend­ing all this mon­ey on crime and you can­not catch the crim­i­nals," he said.

Point­ing to the mur­ders of sev­er­al pris­ons of­fi­cers, Ma­haraj said de­spite sur­veil­lance equip­ment, the killers have not been caught.Ma­haraj is lead at­tor­ney for the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, which has filed le­gal ac­tion against the State for fail­ing to put mea­sures in place to pro­tect them.

"How many peo­ple have been killed in Trinidad and To­ba­go? Look at the mur­ders, look at the crime and all of this mid-year re­view can be to­tal­ly use­less to the pop­u­la­tion un­less the peo­ple are put first," Ma­haraj said.

He said that the crime de­tec­tion rate can im­prove if the jus­tice sys­tem was fixed. He said when he was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI) was brought in to as­sist in bring­ing down the crime rate.Un­der his tenure, ten men were ex­e­cut­ed by the State in 1999 for mur­der, the last time the death penal­ty was car­ried out in T&T.

"The Gov­ern­ment has sur­ren­dered to the crim­i­nals al­ready. They have in ef­fect said they can­not do any­thing about crime. They can­not car­ry out the death sen­tence, the last gov­ern­ment did it, the present gov­ern­ment has done it and the peo­ple are suf­fer­ing," Ma­haraj said.

He called on Gov­ern­ment to un­veil its crime plan, say­ing un­less a com­pre­hen­sive plan to fix the jus­tice sys­tem is rolled out, crime will con­tin­ue to spi­ral out of con­trol.

Pro­tect work­ers' rights–Ab­du­lah

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of job loss­es, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah re­newed his call for Gov­ern­ment to pass leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect work­ers.

"We have work­ers who are be­ing ex­ploit­ed by Arcelor­Mit­tal in a sit­u­a­tion where the com­pa­ny comes in, makes plen­ty, leaves and pays not a cent of sev­er­ance pay to work­ers.

"The work­ers can­not get their pen­sion, which is de­ferred in­come, be­cause the com­pa­ny has gone in­to liq­ui­da­tion," Ab­du­lah said. "In this eco­nom­ic cri­sis, the poor peo­ple must not bear the brunt of ad­just­ment."

Say­ing thou­sands of peo­ple have lost their jobs, Ab­du­lah added: "We are call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to pass leg­is­la­tion, retroac­tive­ly if nec­es­sary, to make sure that in­tra-com­pa­ny trans­fers are not al­lowed to hap­pen.

"We want them to pass leg­is­la­tion to en­sure that the work­ers get their pen­sion funds even though the com­pa­ny has gone in­to liq­ui­da­tion."

Nir­van Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union, called on work­ers to band to­geth­er to fight op­pres­sion. He said it was time for peo­ple to stop vot­ing along racial lines. Al­so speak­ing at the meet­ing were pres­i­dent of the Used Car Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Visham Bab­wah, pres­i­dent of the Sin­gle Fa­ther's As­so­ci­a­tion Rhon­dall Fee­les and MSJ deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Akins Vi­dale.