DPP seeks ideal accommodation for offices

Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard yesterday told the Joint Select Committee on National Security meeting looking into staff deficiencies at the Office of the DPP that an increase in the staff complement at the DPP’s office and urgent emphasis on the spatial needs of the office need to be addressed to ensure maximum output.

The Office of the DPP has outgrown the current locations at which it is currently housed, he said.

On the Gulf City Mall, La Romaine being identified as accomodation for the DPP’s office , Member of Parliament for St Augustine, Prakash Ramadhar said he found it “a bit troubling” and that accommodation could have been found closer to the court house. To be housed in a mall, he said, does not enhance the respect of the office.

Gaspard said when the request was made for removal of the office from its current site, the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs referred several sites to him over the past four years and those sites proved unsuitable for office space.

When the proposal was made for Gulf City Mall, he said, “I give that location my blessings but not before I would have indicated that it would have been a less than ideal site for the Office of the DPP.” On the rental of a property in Port-of- Spain, Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Attorney General, Ingrid Seerattan said, the DPP still has concerns with the property.

Once his concerns are alleviated, she said, the ministry will begin the negotiations and then go forward to seek approval from Cabinet.

Approval for outfitting the Tobago office has been approved, and the contractors have indicated the outfitting will take three months, she said.

Gaspard said the Tobago office was needed because police officers are constrained and forced to use unreliable air and sea bridges when they need to seek legal advice. Very often they are placed on stand-by to travel.

“That is demeaning and inconveniencing,” he said.

On the other hand, he said that every time the DPP’s office has to provide legal representation in Tobago, there are costs involved in terms of travel and accommodation, as well as inconvenience for the legal counsels. If there is a Tobago office, he said, the DPP’s office could retain and hire legal counsel based in Tobago.