?Con­cerns by the mag­is­tra­cy and the po­lice, since the ex­e­cu­tion of pris­on­er Pe­ter Gar­cia in Rio Claro, one week ago, are be­ing echoed by Ch­agua­nas West MP, Jack Warn­er. He is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ex­pe­dite con­struc­tion of a mod­ern court build­ing in Ch­agua­nas. Pres­i­dent of the Mag­is­trates As­so­ci­a­tion, Lu­cin­da Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan, said last week there were se­cu­ri­ty risks in the trans­port of pris­on­ers be­tween po­lice sta­tions and the courts in Rio Claro, Cou­va, Siparia and Ch­agua­nas. Po­lice in Ch­agua­nas have al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar con­cerns. Gar­cia was gunned down while po­lice of­fi­cers were es­cort­ing him on foot from the Rio Claro Court to the near­by po­lice sta­tion.

Armed as­sailants ran up to the mur­der ac­cused and shot him dead as po­lice and on­look­ers scam­pered for cov­er. Warn­er, who is in Nige­ria for the World Un­der-17 World Cup, said: "There is a fear that this kind of thing can hap­pen in Ch­agua­nas, and it must not be al­lowed to hap­pen. "In this mod­ern day, pris­on­ers should not be es­cort­ed on foot, ful­ly ex­posed to the pub­lic, from the po­lice sta­tion to the court. "They should be put in­to a ve­hi­cle and dri­ven to the court and back, and there should be ad­e­quate lev­els of se­cu­ri­ty to pre­vent pris­on­ers from es­cap­ing and to pro­tect them from po­ten­tial as­sas­sins."

Last month, three pris­on­ers es­caped from Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trates' Court. Warn­er added: "The Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trates' Court, in its cur­rent state, is a na­tion­al dis­grace and a death trap. "It is poor­ly-de­signed and presents a num­ber of risks to the mag­is­trates, pris­on­ers and to the gen­er­al pub­lic. It is al­so in­ad­e­quate for the very large and busy dis­trict that it ser­vices. These are is­sues which I pub­licly raised dur­ing a re­cent tour of Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough. I in­sist­ed, then, on a mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty to pro­mote the rule of law in Ch­agua­nas. "I point­ed out to the fact that the de­mo­graph­ics of Ch­agua­nas, the ex­pan­sive phys­i­cal space and sub­stan­tial pop­u­la­tion war­rant­ed a mod­ern and up-to-date fa­cil­i­ty. No one has an­swered my call."

The ju­di­cia­ry had se­lect­ed a build­ing on Ram­saran Street, in 2004, for re­lo­ca­tion of the court. Af­ter pay­ing a month­ly rent of $115,000 for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time, re­lo­ca­tion plans were abort­ed. There has been no word on any new plans for re­lo­cat­ing the court. Dur­ing the open­ing of the law term last month, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie spoke of how the ju­di­cia­ry's de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme had been dealt a crip­pling blow, be­cause of un­der­fund­ing in the 2009/2010 na­tion­al bud­get. The ju­di­cia­ry had re­quest­ed a de­vel­op­ment and plan­ning al­lo­ca­tion of more than $300 mil­lion, but the fi­nal al­lo­ca­tion was less than $50 mil­lion. The Chief Jus­tice said re­fur­bish­ment of court build­ings would be af­fect­ed by the short­fall.