Renu­ka Singh

Cab­i­net has tak­en a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion to re­move all the mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­tricts in T&T.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young an­nounced the abo­li­tion of the cus­tom­ary 13 mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­tricts dur­ing the Par­lia­men­tary sit­ting yes­ter­day.

“If you went on an ex­cur­sion on the oth­er side of Trinidad, man­aged to com­mit an in­frac­tion and get a speed­ing tick­et or park­ing tick­et and you couldn’t pay it over a week­end be­cause you had to pay it at the mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­trict court. You had 14 days to find your­self back in Ma­yaro to go and pay that tick­et,” he said.

“What you are see­ing here to­day is long over­due,” he said.

“Cab­i­net took a de­ci­sion, for­get about all these mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­tricts, we will have north, south and To­ba­go,” he said.

“That leads to a greater ef­fi­cien­cy,” he said.

Young said he could not un­der­stand how mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion saw that as cor­rup­tion.

“I thought to my­self how iron­ic a con­ver­sa­tion about cor­rup­tion..and I’d leave that right there for now,” he said.

Young said the Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed the re­quest from the Ju­di­cia­ry to cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to a le­gal no­tice dat­ed May 22, the mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­trict changeover was in­sti­tut­ed since May 23.

In that doc­u­ment the North Trinidad con­sists of Port-of-Spain, the Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, Diego Mar­tin, San Juan/ Laven­tille, Tu­na­pune/Pi­ar­co and San­gre Grande.

The south­ern mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­trict in­cludes San Fer­nan­do, Point Fortin, Cou­va, Tabaquite/Tal­paro, Siparia, Pe­nal/ Debe, Princes Town and Rip Claro.

The To­ba­go mag­is­te­r­i­al dis­trict com­pris­es all of the is­land.

“We as an ad­min­is­tra­tion sup­port this be­cause we see the ben­e­fi­cia­ry at the end of the day be­ing the pub­lic of T&T and that could on­ly be a good thing,” Young said.