RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Amid a heavy case­load, staff short­ages and fi­nan­cial con­straints, the In­dus­tri­al Court dis­posed of more than 850 mat­ters over the past year. Court Pres­i­dent Jus­tice Heather Seale an­nounced the fig­ures yes­ter­day while ex­press­ing op­ti­mism that long-over­due up­grades will be­gin in the new fis­cal year.

Speak­ing at a spe­cial sit­ting to mark the open­ing of the 2025/2026 law term at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) in San Fer­nan­do, Seale said: “Re­pair and up­grade of our court, long over­due, re­mains a chal­lenge. It is our hope that in this court year we will re­ceive suf­fi­cient fund­ing to start some much-need­ed work. The staff and, oc­ca­sion­al­ly, our judges are not as com­fort­able as they should be.”

She high­light­ed per­sis­tent staffing is­sues, not­ing that all 25 po­si­tions for ver­ba­tim court re­porters re­main va­cant.

“In or­der to par­tial­ly fill that gap, the court has utilised a com­bi­na­tion of ten act­ing re­porters/ser­vice providers, many work­ing part-time and drawn from re­tired re­porters,” she ex­plained.

De­spite these short­ages, Seale praised the ded­i­ca­tion of court staff.

“While we work to im­prove the staff com­ple­ment, the judges and the staff con­tin­ue to strive to ful­fil our man­date of hear­ing and de­ter­min­ing mat­ters ex­pe­di­tious­ly. We com­mend our staff for their ef­forts,” she said.

On the court’s work­load, Seale re­port­ed that 771 new cas­es were filed in the 2024–2025 pe­ri­od, slight­ly few­er than the 803 filed the pre­vi­ous year. The court dis­posed of 854 mat­ters dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, re­flect­ing a clear­ance rate of 110.77 per cent. Trade dis­putes re­mained the largest cat­e­go­ry with 610 cas­es filed, fol­lowed by com­plaints un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act and the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

Seale al­so wel­comed new ap­point­ments to the bench, in­clud­ing Dr Sel­wyn Sama­roo, for­mer se­nior mag­is­trate Brah­manand Dubey and for­mer labour min­is­ter Rudranath In­dars­ingh. Sama­roo and In­dars­ingh were ap­point­ed to the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, while Dubey joined the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.

Re­flect­ing on the court’s 60-year his­to­ry, Seale re­marked: “Like di­a­monds, the In­dus­tri­al Court over these 60 years has shown its en­durance.

“The court and its judges have been able to with­stand pres­sure and ab­sorb heat, all in the in­ter­est of mak­ing bet­ter pro­vi­sion for the sta­bil­i­sa­tion, im­prove­ment and pro­mo­tion of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.”

She al­so out­lined ef­forts to mod­ernise the court through tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing a new ware­house with smart shelv­ing and ra­dio-fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID) for court records.

“The project on the con­ver­sion of the old ju­di­cial en­force­ment man­age­ment sys­tem data­base to the new case man­age­ment soft­ware has con­tin­ued. Our aim is to en­hance our func­tion­ing to make ac­cess eas­i­er and more in align­ment with the dig­i­tal age, while keep­ing the needs of our stake­hold­ers fore­most,” she said.

De­spite on­go­ing re­source chal­lenges, Seale af­firmed the court’s com­mit­ment to its man­date.