Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court Heather Seale has high­light­ed staffing short­ages and in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems at the court, ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to make fund­ing avail­able to ad­dress the is­sues.

Seale raised the con­cerns dur­ing her open­ing ad­dress at a spe­cial sit­ting com­mem­o­rat­ing the be­gin­ning of the new law term at the In­dus­tri­al Court on St Vin­cent Street, Port of Spain, yes­ter­day.

She not­ed that dur­ing the 2025-2026 law term, 876 new cas­es were brought be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, com­pared with 171 in the 2024-2025 law term.

The court dis­posed of 1,014 mat­ters dur­ing the lat­est law term, com­pared with 854 dur­ing the pre­vi­ous term, re­sult­ing in a clear­ance rate of 115.75 per cent for the 2025-2026 pe­ri­od.

“A clear­ance rate of around 100 per cent or high­er means the court is able to re­solve at least as many cas­es as are filed. It does not mea­sure back­log,” Seale said.

Seale said there was a need to ad­dress staffing is­sues, not­ing that no clerks or stenog­ra­phers were ap­point­ed dur­ing the year and that on­ly three peo­ple were pro­vid­ing sec­re­tar­i­al sup­port for the judges.

Of that num­ber, she said two were serv­ing sev­en judges, while the third was as­signed to six judges.

She added that the sec­re­tary to the court’s vice-pres­i­dent would be re­tir­ing soon, which would fur­ther ex­ac­er­bate the strain and work­load on the re­main­ing staff.

“The court may well have to re­sort to con­tract em­ploy­ment to im­prove this un­hap­py sit­u­a­tion and of course we would need to have the fund­ing to so do.”

Seale not­ed that the court was al­so await­ing Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion on the cre­ation of court clerk po­si­tions.

She said the In­dus­tri­al Court was seek­ing to prop­er­ly com­pen­sate these of­fi­cials, which would al­so avoid the need to re­ly on On-the-Job Trainees (OJTs) for the role.

“Trainees are at­tached to the court for two years and usu­al­ly leave af­ter their stint, just when they are be­com­ing pro­fi­cient.

“This has been af­fect­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of the reg­istry as there is the need for con­stant train­ing and re-train­ing.”

She added that the re­port­ing sec­tion of the In­dus­tri­al Court was al­so en­coun­ter­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­quests from at­tor­neys for court tran­scripts.

“While it might be pos­si­ble to fa­cil­i­tate such re­quests with a full com­ple­ment of staff, it places im­mense pres­sure on the re­porters giv­en our cur­rent staffing lev­els.

“Pri­or­i­ty will con­tin­ue to be giv­en to the pro­vi­sion of tran­scripts in cas­es of ap­peals and com­plet­ed cas­es where judg­ment has been re­served.”

In ad­di­tion to man­pow­er short­ages, Seale al­so raised con­cerns about the state of the court build­ing, cit­ing a leak­ing roof and a non-func­tion­al clock tow­er.

“I need on­ly echo the sen­ti­ments of the ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice at the com­mem­o­ra­tion open­ing of the Supreme Court last week, re­gard­ing our need for the mon­ey,” Seale said.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia Ltd via What­sApp, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj said re­quests are made to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and sub­se­quent­ly brought to Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion.

“From the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion these is­sues are gen­er­al­ly dealt with favourably,” Ma­haraj said.