Dar­ren Ba­haw

Judges of the Supreme Court are set to get a sub­stan­tial in­crease in their take-home pack­age, which in­cludes a hefty in­crease in their hous­ing al­lowance and mon­ey to trav­el over­seas for ju­di­cial con­fer­ences, top ju­di­cial sources have dis­closed.The lat­est rec­om­men­da­tions of Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) al­so were dis­cussed at yes­ter­day's meet­ing among judges at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain.

Top le­gal sources said the SRC has rec­om­mend­ed sub­stan­tial in­creas­es to the salary, hous­ing al­lowance, trav­el grant and ju­di­cial con­tact al­lowance for Chief Jus­tice, Jus­tices of Ap­peal and High Court judges.The 98th re­port of the SRC was sched­uled to be laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day but has been de­ferred to this Fri­day, sources said. The Chief Jus­tice, ac­cord­ing to sources, is set to re­ceive a to­tal in­crease of over $20,000. He cur­rent­ly earns over $60,000 tax free.

Ap­peal Court judges are set to re­ceive an al­most $22,000 in­crease, mov­ing from an al­most $48,000 month­ly earn­ing, while High Court judges are to re­ceive a sim­i­lar in­crease, ju­di­cial sources said.Among the big changes, sources said, was an in­crease in the $10,300 hous­ing al­lowance for Ap­peal Court and High Court judges, which is set to move to $24,000.Judges of the Supreme Court have long con­tend­ed that they are en­ti­tled to a "su­per grade" hous­ing al­lowance.

They had ar­gued that in the past judges were al­lot­ted hous­es in Fed­er­a­tion Park, Port-of-Spain, un­der the then Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, as part of their terms and con­di­tions.How­ev­er, un­der the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion reign in the 1980s, those judges who then oc­cu­pied hous­es at Fed­er­a­tion Park were giv­en the op­tion to pur­chase the hous­es while new judges were giv­en a hous­ing al­lowance.

Ju­di­cial sources said giv­en the prece­dent where once some­thing was giv­en to Supreme Court judges it could not be tak­en away, as it would seem to be un­der­min­ing the in­de­pen­dence of their of­fice, judges had come to­geth­er to raise funds to seek a le­gal opin­ion from a British Queen's Coun­sel on the is­sue of them be­ing paid a hous­ing al­lowance that would af­ford them to oc­cu­py "su­per grade" hous­es.

That opin­ion, to­geth­er with the le­gal opin­ion from a lo­cal Se­nior Coun­sel, con­clud­ed that judges were en­ti­tled to such an al­lowance and the judges at one point even con­tem­plat­ed tak­ing le­gal ac­tion to get it, ju­di­cial sources said.The State had main­tained a ful­ly fur­nished of­fi­cial res­i­dence at St Clair for the Chief Jus­tice, the na­tion's third high­est of­fice hold­er but that house was sold in De­cem­ber 1997 for just over $7 mil­lion.

Since then, the State has rent­ed pri­vate ac­com­mo­da­tion for the sit­ting Chief Jus­tice at Good­wood Gar­dens, Glen­coe, for a month­ly rent of close to $60,000.One of the largest in­creas­es judges are set to re­ceive, sources said, was an al­lowance to at­tend over­seas con­fer­ences.That fig­ure is set to jump from just un­der $10,000 to close to $120,000 a year.