(Trinidad Express) Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and several members of Cabinet have met with Chief Justice Ivor Archie to discuss the administration of justice in the country.
Also at the meeting on Wednesday was an executive management team of the Judiciary headed by the Chief Justice.
The Judiciary, in a statement yesterday, stated only that the meeting was for the purpose of discussing matters pertaining to the administration of justice.
“The meeting addressed administrative and logistical strategies to bring those components of the justice system under the control of separate arms of the State into more effective alignment and speed up justice delivery,” stated the release.
It said a number of “immediate interventions were identified and agreed” to at the meeting.
No further details were given.
The Judiciary said the meeting came to an end with a commitment “to meet periodically to ensure that progress remains on course”.
At the Conversations with the Prime Minister event in March, Rowley opined that the delivery of justice in Trinidad and Tobago was too slow.
He said then that Government had given priority, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in resources to the Judiciary in the form of an increased number of masters, judges, courts and the removal of traffic cases out of the system.
“But speaking as a citizen, I have not seen any acceleration in the delivery of justice. So there must be something, somewhere else,” the Prime Minister had said, adding that the best friend of the person who had to answer any charge before the court was “Mr Delay”.
He said when people owed other people money, they are now brazenly telling them “take me to court”, knowing the snail’s pace of justice is their friend.
“I was shocked to see the State as the prosecutor asking for an extension on a matter that has been before the court for seven years,” Rowley recalled, noting that the magistrate to whom the application was made denied the request.
The Prime Minister said another matter had been tied up in the preliminary enquiry stage for 20 years.
He said it was not fair to people in Remand Yard who had to be waiting for years for their day in court.
Saying that he expected some people to criticise him for his comments, Rowley said he was commenting on the state of the country.
“There is no sacred cow. I am taking issue with this because I am not seeing the benefits of what we are investing,” he had said.
