Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­rin­ton@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, labour stal­wart Sel­wyn Sama­roo and ex-mag­is­trate Bramb­hanan Dubay are step­ping in­to the roles pre­vi­ous­ly held by judges Vin­cent Cabr­era, Lawrence Achong, and Wendy Ali in the In­dus­tri­al Court.

The new judges were to re­ceive their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the In­dus­tri­al Court com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment, which promised to send an of­fi­cial re­lease but it nev­er came.

How­ev­er, sources say In­dars­ingh and Sama­roo will pre­side over mat­ters in the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, which han­dles dis­putes af­fect­ing the civ­il ser­vice, po­lice, fire and prison ser­vices. Dubay takes on the broad­er re­mit of the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.

Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) and civ­il ser­vice bod­ies have re­cent­ly high­light­ed deep­er un­ease with the state of the In­dus­tri­al Court. At the cen­tre of that un­ease is Judge Lar­ry Achong, the out­go­ing chair­man of the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and head of the Spe­cial Tri­bunal.

The JTUM has long raised con­cerns about his per­ceived par­tial­i­ty, call­ing for his re­moval not on­ly on pro­ce­dur­al grounds but out of a con­vic­tion that his pres­ence un­der­cuts the in­tegri­ty of jus­tice.

That ten­sion grew when Achong re­ceived a six-month ex­ten­sion to his term, grant­ed by the Pres­i­dent af­ter court-pres­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion. Unions and le­gal com­men­ta­tors ar­gue that Cab­i­net’s pow­er to dic­tate ap­point­ments and re­scind or ex­tend terms al­so threat­ens im­par­tial­i­ty.

In a What­sApp re­sponse yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the judges were “well qual­i­fied in labour re­la­tions.” She didn’t re­spond to ques­tions about the re­moval of the oth­er judges.

At­tempts to con­tact the new judges were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.