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PM expects hectic Parliament session, unhappy with justice system

by

#meta[ag-author]
Chester Sambrano
20220912221803
20220912
Former House speaker Barry Sinanan, left, shakes Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s hand before the start of the Ceremonial Opening of the Third Session of the Twelfth Parliament at the Red House yesterday. At left is former Senate president Timothy Hamel-Smith and Mickela Panday.

Former House speaker Barry Sinanan, left, shakes Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s hand before the start of the Ceremonial Opening of the Third Session of the Twelfth Parliament at the Red House yesterday. At left is former Senate president Timothy Hamel-Smith and Mickela Panday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Now that the Third Ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment has been of­fi­cial­ly opened, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed yes­ter­day that it will be a busy ses­sion for the next year.

“This pe­ri­od that is com­ing up would be very hec­tic, there are a num­ber of things that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to get done,” Row­ley said.

The con­tentious Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is high on the list to be com­plet­ed.

“We ex­pect to get the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion pro­claimed ful­ly, there are some lil (sic) hic­cups and rough edges in there but I ex­pect that we are go­ing to go ahead with it and smooth them out along the way,” he said.

For months there have been in­creas­ing calls from stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing from the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), for the law to be ful­ly pro­claimed.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer JCC pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond, the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act was passed over sev­en years ago in Jan­u­ary 2015, dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion then amend­ed the act three times be­fore the reg­u­la­tions were agreed to with The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) and ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment sev­en months ago, in Jan­u­ary 2022.

Oth­er items on the leg­isla­tive agen­da for the Gov­ern­ment are cy­ber­crime laws, elec­tion fi­nanc­ing and the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, Row­ley said.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form is al­so a key fo­cus.

Dr Row­ley said the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the leg­is­la­tion is ex­pect­ed to be done by 2023. He said the re­form and elec­tion would go hand in hand.

So, will there be an elec­tion this year?

“Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know,” he said.

As it re­lates to an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion, he said there aren’t many new things but said there needs to be an im­prove­ment in de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion and case man­age­ment at the courts.

“I must tell you, with­out be­ing per­son­al­ly crit­i­cal of mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, our sys­tem of dis­pens­ing jus­tice is much too slow and it ben­e­fits the crim­i­nal el­e­ment,” he said.

The PM said once a crime has been de­tect­ed and ev­i­dence pro­duced, the courts must work ex­pe­di­tious­ly to re­solve the mat­ter.

“This thing about a mat­ter start­ing in year nought and by year fifty it is still go­ing on that is whol­ly un­ac­cept­able and whether it is my fault, your fault, their fault it is just un­ac­cept­able,” he added.

He said a lot of mon­ey has been spent and ef­fort put in and “we are not see­ing any im­prove­ment.”

He said that is one of the big prob­lems fac­ing T&T and it is quite de­mor­al­is­ing to the T&TPS.


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