Along with the na­tion­al Ju­di­cia­ry and the mag­is­tra­cy, the In­dus­tri­al Court is bring­ing in­to ques­tion the abil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try now 64 years old, to have a ju­di­cial sys­tem which can be re­lied up­on to de­liv­er jus­tice in a man­ner re­quired.

The Sun­day Guardian re­port on the In­dus­tri­al Court points to its fail­ure to achieve one of the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of a jus­tice sys­tem, ie to de­liv­er jus­tice on time. It al­so high­lights a ma­jor in­ef­fi­cien­cy with judg­ments out­stand­ing for pe­ri­ods of over 10 to 15 years.

In a spe­cif­ic in­stance, the Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­di­cates that where­as the law in the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Court re­quires judg­ments to be de­liv­ered 30 days af­ter the hear­ing has been con­clud­ed, in spe­cial cir­cum­stances, an ad­di­tion­al 21 days are al­lowed. How­ev­er, the records did not show de­lays of days or months, they showed some judg­ments re­served for years.”

Read­ers should bear in mind the fact that in­dus­tri­al dis­putes are at the heart of not on­ly de­liv­er­ing jus­tice to work­ers and em­ploy­ers. Such judg­ments fa­cil­i­tate com­pet­i­tive pro­duc­tion in the econ­o­my. Dif­fer­ent­ly put, an in­dus­tri­al en­vi­ron­ment bogged down by un­re­solved mat­ters over years im­pacts on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, em­ploy­er-em­ploy­ee re­la­tions and in­vest­ments of a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar na­ture.

There are se­ri­ous ques­tions to be an­swered, start­ing with the whys of the gross un­der­per­for­mance of the court and its judges. Ac­cord­ing to the Sun­day Guardian re­port, there are in­di­vid­ual judges whose num­ber of back­log judg­ments range be­tween 17 to 78 in wait­ing.

How is it pos­si­ble for the head of the In­dus­tri­al Court and the ad­min­is­tra­tion to have al­lowed this ab­solute­ly un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion to grow over the pe­ri­od of years? And while the re­port does not state what ac­tion has been tak­en to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion, the fact that this sit­u­a­tion of out­stand­ing judg­ments con­tin­ues sug­gests that what­ev­er ac­tion has been tak­en or con­tem­plat­ed has not been ad­e­quate to the task at hand.

As es­tab­lished, the In­dus­tri­al Court is an in­de­pen­dent body which does not re­port to any min­is­ter or min­istry. That or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture notwith­stand­ing, the fact is that while the Pres­i­dent does the of­fi­cial and cer­e­mo­ni­al in­stal­la­tion of the judges to the court, it’s the Cab­i­net which de­cides on who should be ap­point­ed.

Such a sys­tem opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ment-based pol­i­tics play­ing an im­por­tant part in the ap­point­ments and con­tin­u­ing tenure of judges of the court. That means all gov­ern­ments over the 15 to 20-year pe­ri­od where judges per­formed poor­ly have had and con­tin­ue to hold the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the back­log of in­ef­fi­cien­cy, even in­com­pe­tence.

There are se­ri­ous ques­tions to be probed to find an­swers. It sure­ly can­not sim­ply be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the prac­tice of gov­ern­ments ap­point­ing judges, among them non-per­form­ing in­di­vid­u­als, placed in the court pure­ly on the ba­sis of their con­nec­tion with the par­ty in pow­er. The fact is that all across the poli­ty and econ­o­my in T&T have ex­pe­ri­enced the neg­a­tive re­sults of such meth­ods of plac­ing in­di­vid­u­als in po­si­tions of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for which they are not suit­ed.

This is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter which in­volves the econ­o­my and one which the in­abil­i­ty of the present sys­tem of ap­point­ment and man­age­ment is un­able to fix.