There is yet an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry, this time over the pro­ce­dure for grant­i­ng judges per­mis­sion to leave the coun­try out­side of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s two an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­ods.

The is­sue was raised by out­spo­ken High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad in a let­ter sent to all of his col­leagues on Tues­day.

In the let­ter, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Seep­er­sad called on his col­leagues to call for a meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to dis­cuss the is­sue.

“The Chief Jus­tice, as the head of this in­sti­tu­tion, can put aside his views in re­la­tion to the po­si­tions ex­pressed con­cern­ing him and we can all com­mit to ex­er­cise re­straint as we en­gage each oth­er to dis­cuss is­sues which may im­pact up­on our abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly dis­charge our oblig­a­tions to the cit­i­zens of this Re­pub­lic or which may im­pact the terms and con­di­tions at­ten­dant to our ap­point­ments as judges,” Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so not­ed that for the past two years there have no meet­ing with judges chaired by Archie.

Seep­er­sad ad­mit­ted that his let­ter stemmed from his re­quest to at­tend a con­fer­ence in Ger­many in Ju­ly, which was spon­sored by the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of De­fence. He at­tached cor­re­spon­dence be­tween him, Archie and Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes in which his re­quest was ef­fec­tive­ly de­nied.

In his let­ter, re­quest­ing per­mis­sion to at­tend the con­fer­ence, Seep­er­sad not­ed that he had al­ready man­aged his case-load to en­sure that he de­liv­ers all out­stand­ing judge­ments be­fore his sched­uled trip.

Re­spond­ing to Seep­er­sad, Archie ex­pressed reser­va­tions over the use­ful­ness of the con­fer­ence to his job and over how Seep­er­sad was se­lect­ed to par­tic­i­pate. How­ev­er, he did not di­rect­ly ob­ject to the re­quest and still for­ward­ed it to Weekes for her ap­proval.

In a let­ter sent to Archie by Weekes, she al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar reser­va­tions as Archie as she de­nied the re­quest.

“Noth­ing in those doc­u­ments sat­is­fies me that the pro­gramme con­tent is re­lat­ed to the ju­di­cial func­tions of the ho­n­ourable judge such as would jus­ti­fy his ex­tend­ed ab­sence from the ju­ris­dic­tion,” Weekes said.

Archie then re­spond­ed to Seep­er­sad and claimed that he had dif­fi­cul­ties in jus­ti­fy­ing the re­quest based on his com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Weekes.

In the let­ter to his col­leagues, Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed that the process used by Archie and Weekes to han­dle his re­quest may have con­tra­vened the Judges (Con­di­tions of Ser­vice and Al­lowances) Reg­u­la­tions.

Un­der the reg­u­la­tions, judges seek­ing to trav­el dur­ing the court’s East­er and Christ­mas va­ca­tion pe­ri­ods need the ap­proval of both the Chief Jus­tice and the Pres­i­dent. Judges seek­ing to take their an­nu­al va­ca­tion leave, which they are en­ti­tled to in ad­di­tion to the set court va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, need the Chief Jus­tice’s ap­proval.

“It was my un­der­stand­ing that once the Chief Jus­tice ap­proved a re­quest to trav­el out of the ju­ris­dic­tion, dur­ing the term, that the Pres­i­dent’s ap­proval was a for­mal­i­ty,” Seep­er­sad said.

He said the res­o­lu­tion of the is­sue would as­sist his col­leagues in the fu­ture.

“In any event, the is­sue re­quires clar­i­fi­ca­tion as we should all clear­ly un­der­stand how and un­der what cir­cum­stances trav­el dur­ing the term may be al­lowed, how days are to be ac­count­ed for and whether we must now ap­ply for va­ca­tion for per­son­al trav­el dur­ing the term,” he said.

Seep­er­sad al­so sug­gest­ed that the process should be more trans­par­ent.

“On the is­sue of trav­el, there is al­so need to dis­cuss the of­fi­cial trav­el sched­ules of all judges as many among us fre­quent­ly go on train­ing or cours­es but yet most of us are un­aware as to how the at­ten­dees are se­lect­ed and the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with same,” Seep­er­sad said.