Gail Alexan­der

Look out for a much big­ger fine of $100,000 if you’re hunt­ing wild meat il­le­gal­ly.

And Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Sean Sobers has sup­port­ed Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­crease the penal­ties for il­le­gal hunt­ing - and oth­er vi­o­la­tions of wildlife con­ser­va­tion law - from $10,000 to $100,000 since Sobers has said peo­ple have been cry­ing out for this for a long time.

“The in­creas­es in pe­nal­i­ties are much need­ed be­cause of peo­ple il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing game sanc­tu­ar­ies and state lands out­side of hunt­ing sea­son,” Sobers said in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the pro­pos­al.

The in­crease is con­tained in claus­es pre­sent­ed in a Mis­cel­la­neous pack­age of amend­ments to 36 bills pre­sent­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi yes­ter­day. Al Rawi said the cur­rent $10,000 fine lev­el for vi­o­la­tion of wildlife con­ser­va­tion laws was “ridicu­lous”.

From Jan­u­ary 2019 fines for vi­o­la­tion for var­i­ous claus­es in the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act (67:01) were raised from sums rang­ing from a min­i­mum of $200, $1,000 and $5,000 to $10,000. That fine cov­ered hunt­ing in a game sanc­tu­ary, hunt­ing pro­tect­ed an­i­mals with­out a spe­cial Game Li­cence, fail­ing to pro­duce/ob­tain a state Game Li­cence, ex­port of an­i­mals with­out per­mis­sion, hunt­ing while dis­qual­i­fied, hunt­ing/ex­er­cis­ing dogs dur­ing the closed sea­son, re­sist­ing a game war­den and oth­er of­fences.

But the AG yes­ter­day said the $10,000 fines for those ar­eas are now be­ing hiked to $100,000.

The UNC’s Sobers stat­ed, “Peo­ple must un­der­stand why sanc­tu­ar­ies are es­tab­lished to al­low wildlife to con­tin­ue to ex­ist when hunt­ing is closed,”

Sobers asked if the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter would al­so strength­en sys­tems re­gard­ing game war­dens who po­lice ter­rain.

On an­oth­er as­pect of the amend­ment pack­age - al­low­ing the Chief Jus­tice to trans­fer cas­es from one ju­ris­dic­tion to an­oth­er- Sobers said he saw a de­gree of wis­dom in al­low­ing for cas­es to be trans­ferred among ju­ris­dic­tions. He not­ed the case in­volv­ing the 1990 failed coup at­tempt was done at a Ch­aguara­mas court for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.

Sobers added, “Al­so cur­rent­ly we en­counter large traf­fic jams when a cer­tain mat­ter is on in the POS Mag­is­trates’ Court. I don’t see any at­tempt to af­fect the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice if a court’s moved to a more se­cure lo­ca­tion if prop­er rea­sons are ad­vanced.”

But Sobers ad­vised that some con­sent should be re­quest­ed from par­ties in­volved in the cas­es and they should be con­sult­ed if a mat­ter is shift­ed. He said new lo­ca­tions should have prop­er in­fra­struc­ture. He said so far au­dio­vi­su­al sys­tems are work­ing well un­der COVID pro­to­cols. But he said body lan­guage is al­so con­sid­ered in cas­es and that may not al­ways be prop­er­ly de­ter­mined in vir­tu­al hear­ings.

“It’s a shame we had to wait for COVID to reach this stage where we em­brace the tech­nol­o­gy,”

Sobers quipped he’d heard that some le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers us­ing (vir­tu­al) sys­tems “…..Wear their shirt, tie and jack­et – and in some in­stances, no pants,”

He said while it was a big bill, the ma­jor­i­ty of cat­e­gories in the pack­age in­volved small changes.

CJ shouldn’t trans­fer cas­es - Mark

UNC sen­a­tor Wade Mark who com­plained about the size of the pack­age said al­low­ing the CJ to trans­fer cas­es from one ju­ris­dic­tion to an­oth­er, could prompt “fo­rum shop­ping". He said the sit­u­a­tion could al­low cas­es to go to mag­is­trates who may be “be­hold­en” to the CJ and it un­der­mined the Chief Mag­is­trate’s au­ton­o­my.

Mark de­cried an­oth­er clause which he said would re­move re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for plea­sure craft from the Cus­toms Comp­trol­ler to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter - who he said owns a plea­sure craft.

UNC Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein said al­low­ing the CJ to shift cas­es among ju­ris­dic­tions was “in­ter­fer­ing with the ju­di­cial process.” He said there are in­ter­ests in so­ci­ety, the sit­u­a­tion could lead to “fo­rum shop­ping and the Chief Jus­tice may be able to ”in­flu­ence mat­ters."

Ho­sein said vir­tu­al hear­ings can re­sult in ef­fi­cien­cy but shift­ing cas­es couldn’t be done for ex­pe­di­en­cy. He said vir­tu­al hear­ings don’t prop­er­ly show if some­one was be­ing truth­ful or not.

Ho­sein said yes­ter­day might very well be the Sen­ate’s last sit­ting (due to Par­lia­ment’s up­com­ing re­cess) “And you can bring 35 bills but the UNC will still form the Gov­ern­ment.”

AG Al Rawi said it wasn’t the Sen­ate’s last sit­ting since the Sen­ate meets again to­day.