Magistrate pleads for help at Sando Courts

ACTING Senior Magistrate Ramraj Harripersad, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Magistrates (TTAM), is appealing to the powers that be to improve the working conditions in the nation’s Magistrates’ Courts.

Ironically, Magistrate Harripersad is based at the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court, where last Thursday and Friday, support staff stayed away from work as a form of protest against unbearable conditions at that court house. Several problems being experienced at the San Fernando court house include a leaking roof, cracked and moss-stained windows, no air-conditioning, roosting of pigeons and bats (whose faeces stain the court room floor and furniture) and the proliferation of biting and stinging insects.

Magistrate Harripersad said that while the TTAM has not taken an official stand on the sick-out action, he was speaking out because he is being directly affected (because of his appointment) and even moreso, when no remedial action is taken, “everyone suffers.” “I am appealing to the Executive and the purse holders to touch down and give us relief,” Magistrate Harripersad said. “Between 85 to 90 percent of litigation matters are heard in the Magistrates’ Court therefore this is where justice is initially dispensed,” he added.