Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

As the new law term ap­proach­es, the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) is re­new­ing its call for ur­gent at­ten­tion to long­stand­ing chal­lenges with­in the ju­di­cia­ry, chief among them the re­open­ing of the San Fer­nan­do High Court.

ASL pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan said yes­ter­day that the clo­sure of the court con­tin­ues to weigh heav­i­ly on at­tor­neys and lit­i­gants in south Trinidad.

She stressed that ad­e­quate and func­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing ac­cess to jus­tice and pub­lic con­fi­dence in the sys­tem.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia ahead of the re­open­ing of the law term to­day, Lakhan said, “The As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers looks for­ward to the new law term and re­mains hope­ful that it will be one marked by mean­ing­ful progress in ad­dress­ing some of the long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges fac­ing the ju­di­cia­ry.

“We al­so take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of the time­ly re­open­ing of the San Fer­nan­do High Court, which re­mains a mat­ter of sig­nif­i­cant con­cern for our mem­bers and the wider pub­lic. The avail­abil­i­ty of ad­e­quate and func­tion­al court fa­cil­i­ties is es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing ac­cess to jus­tice and main­tain­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.”

Lakhan al­so weighed in on the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­vi­ous pro­pos­al for the cre­ation of the of­fice of a Chan­cel­lor to as­sist the Chief Jus­tice, first raised by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ac­cord­ing to her, the ap­point­ment of such an of­fice could bring crit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port to the ju­di­cia­ry.

“Such a de­vel­op­ment could al­low the Chief Jus­tice to fo­cus more keen­ly on the core le­gal and ju­rispru­den­tial as­pects of his role, while the chan­cel­lor could help ad­dress press­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive and op­er­a­tional mat­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly those re­lat­ed to court in­fra­struc­ture and ef­fi­cien­cy,” she stat­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that “the leg­is­la­tion is in train to be brought to Par­lia­ment be­fore the end of this year.”

Lakhan as­sert­ed that her mem­ber­ship in­tends to con­tin­ue press­ing for re­forms and in­fra­struc­tur­al im­prove­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the south­ern re­gion, to en­sure that the jus­tice sys­tem re­mains fair, ac­ces­si­ble, and ef­fi­cient.