Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie met with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and oth­ers to dis­cuss is­sues raised about vir­tu­al court op­er­a­tions.

In a state­ment is­sued over the week­end, the Ju­di­cia­ry said the meet­ing was held on Fri­day at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre and fo­cused on ad­dress­ing con­cerns about vir­tu­al court op­er­a­tions.

The state­ment said the Ju­di­cia­ry host­ed a del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al De­vesh Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Dar­rell Al­la­har and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al In­di­ra Ram­paul-Ched­die.

The meet­ing fol­lowed pub­lic crit­i­cism by Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters over the Ju­di­cia­ry’s use of po­lice sta­tions to host vir­tu­al hear­ings. The Ju­di­cia­ry de­fend­ed the prac­tice in a state­ment on May 30, main­tain­ing that it was a prac­ti­cal mea­sure to im­prove ac­cess to jus­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ur­gent and high-vol­ume mat­ters.

Se­nior mem­bers of the Court Ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by the Chief Jus­tice, al­so at­tend­ed the ses­sion.

The state­ment said dis­cus­sions ad­dressed con­cerns raised by stake­hold­ers and the pub­lic about stream­lin­ing vir­tu­al court op­er­a­tions. The del­e­ga­tion com­mit­ted to work­ing on so­lu­tions that en­hance ac­cess to jus­tice while en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy.

Of­fi­cials al­so agreed to con­vene fol­low-up dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing oth­er min­istries, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), and the Bar to re­solve out­stand­ing is­sues and strength­en in­sti­tu­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Ju­di­cia­ry de­scribed the meet­ing as pro­duc­tive and cor­dial, un­der­scor­ing its im­por­tance in ad­vanc­ing crit­i­cal im­prove­ments to jus­tice de­liv­ery in T&T.