JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Mayor: Old Sando court to be torn down soon

by

Sascha Wilson
2124 days ago
20190925
The San Fernando Magistrates’ Court which is to be demolished.

The San Fernando Magistrates’ Court which is to be demolished.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Sascha Wil­son

De­mo­li­tion of the old mag­is­trates court build­ing in San Fer­nan­do is ex­pect­ed to be­gin soon.

That’s the word of San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nior Re­grel­lo fol­low­ing a no­tice is­sued by the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion last week that the court was go­ing to be de­mol­ished be­tween Fri­day and Sun­day.

The build­ing was still stand­ing yes­ter­day, but work­ers re­placed the yel­low cau­tion tape in front the build­ing with a red tape with the word dan­ger writ­ten on it.

The roof­less build­ing is par­tial­ly cov­ered by a tar­pau­lin and pieces of the ceil­ing, in­clud­ing the gut­ter­ing, have been break­ing off.

There have been sev­er­al com­plaints from mem­bers of the pub­lic and the law fra­ter­ni­ty that the 80-year-old his­toric build­ing has be­come an eye­sore and is a safe­ty haz­ard.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice, de­mo­li­tion works were sup­posed to have com­menced on Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 20 at 6 pm and con­tin­ue un­til 12 pm on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 22.

It fur­ther ad­vised that no ve­hic­u­lar would be al­lowed along the streets in front of the court and the po­lice sta­tion.

Speak­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion’s Statu­to­ry Meet­ing yes­ter­day, the may­or said they were in­formed by the Ju­di­cia­ry that dis­man­tling of the build­ing would have start­ed last week.

How­ev­er, he said some work did start last Fri­day.

He said, “They start­ed last Fri­day but they are do­ing in­ter­nal work so all the cup­boards, the air con­di­tion­ing units and what­ev­er could have been sal­vaged was moved last week and it will be con­tin­ued on a week­end ba­sis.”

He es­ti­mat­ed that the de­mo­li­tion would take about a month.

“They de­cid­ed to work on week­ends be­cause it can re­al­ly cre­ate some prob­lems with all the schools and the dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions we have in the com­mu­ni­ty and in the area,” he said.

Last week, pres­i­dent of the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers Michael Rooplal re­newed his call for ur­gent mea­sures to be tak­en to fix the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem which he said has ef­fec­tive­ly bro­ken down in San Fer­nan­do.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Rooplal said, “There seems to be no end in sight in re­spect of the plight faced by the south­ern le­gal com­mu­ni­ty.”

Two years ago the (old) mag­is­trates court was tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the San Fer­nan­do High Court and the mag­is­trates court at Mad­i­nah build­ing to fa­cil­i­tate road re­pairs.

A few months lat­er all the courts were re­lo­cat­ed to the High Court and to date are shar­ing court­rooms on a shift  sys­tem. Op­er­a­tions nev­er re­sumed in the old court build­ing.

When con­tact­ed for a com­ment via email the Ju­di­cia­ry’s court pro­to­col and in­for­ma­tion man­ag­er Carl Fran­cis said he would re­spond as soon as pos­si­ble but to late yes­ter­day no re­sponse was forth­com­ing.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored