Dear Editor,
I thank the Stabroek News for following up on its earlier article ‘AG says Laws of Guyana omissions being corrected’ (SN, September 16). It is reassuring that Mr Nandlall should claim that the technical team of the Law Reform Commission of which he is the Chairman had already identified and begun taking corrective measures to deal with the omissions cited by me, but at the same time it is troubling that he allowed for the sale. It is also irrelevant but strange that Mr Nandlall wants to “be congratulated for completing this task” even as he admits to errors of omission and commission. His bar for congratulations is low indeed.
In my view the reporter was particularly generous to Mr Nandlall in allowing him to offer some nonsensical excuses at the expense of serious and relevant questions. His excuse or explanation that his commission “had liaised with the law revision centre [sic] of the Eastern Caribbean which serves to assist in law revision for most of the Caricom countries” is a crude attempt to attribute blame for his commission’s incompetence to a small regional block of three countries – Anguilla, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands – all of which can probably sit comfortably on one of our Essequibo islands, and none of which is an independent state.
Here are some questions which I believe the reporter may still wish to ask the learned Attorney General:
- Mr Attorney General, please identify the primary and secondary legislation omitted from the recently published Laws of Guyana?
- And can you provide a list of the legislation included in those laws for which errors of omission and commission have been detected, and provide particulars of those errors?
- Can you say when those errors of omission and commission became known to the Law Revision Commission, and if before the release of the Laws, who made the decision to publish laws that were known to have multiple deficiencies?
- Please let me know what was the total cost of the Law Revision Project and how it was funded.
- Can you give an account of the money provided by the IDB for the project, including payments to consultants, commissioners and their technical advisors?
- Can you confirm that the money collected from the sale of the Laws is being deposited into the Consolidated Fund?
- Can you state the projected date for the release of all of the amendments to be made to the 18 volumes of the Laws?
- Would you entertain requests for refund or rebate to those persons who have acquired incomplete and incorrect copies of those laws at the cost of $825,000?
- Would it be correct to state that the statement by you as Chairman of the commission that “The publication of the Laws presents the laws of Guyana in force at December 31, 2010” is not correct?
- Have you notified the courts of the errors in the Laws and did you offer any direction to them in relation thereto?
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
