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Magistrate’s actions are justified

Jul 03, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Once again a Magistrate on the Essequibo Coast had to register her total dismay at the most deplorable condition of two of the three courts on that coast, by refusing to work in them.
She is so far the last in a long line of Magistrates who had to do that. I offer her my understanding and support, and my congratulations for having the strength of will to show her outrage at the conditions under which she has to work, and I recommend that she hold her grounds and not give up.
The building at Charity was in a disreputable state of disrepair for the longest while. I stopped practising there almost 10 years now, and even at that time the building was unfit to be a courtroom. Past Magistrates, like ex-Chief Magistrate Cecil Sullivan and Land Court Judge R. Rooplall, were patient understanding people, and many were the times when we had to wait while the police scrambled around to get insecticide and broom to kill the marabuntas and do a hasty clean-up.  If I remember correctly, on several occasions they refused to work too.
The building is very old. I was in my early teens attending the nearby primary school when in 1945, just after the Great War, one of the soldiers’ quarters from either Makouria or Atkinson Field, I forget where, was dismantled and brought to Charity.  It was re-assembled in just a few days, on the spot where it is now. It was then L-shaped and the northern portion was the courtroom, while the rest of the building was the Government Rest House.
As the building fell apart over the years, it was reduced in size and patched up until the shoddy portion that now remains became the court room. That building is entirely irreparable and should be scrapped altogether immediately.
The one at Anna Regina is not any newer, but because it houses the police station on the ground floor and the barrack room and officer’s quarters on the third floor, it is kept in some state of repair. The court is on the second floor.
On the third floor on the western side just above the courtroom, and not too far from where the Magistrate sits, is a toilet and bathroom, and from that point there has been overflow ever since I went there as a lawyer in 1959.
I remember once Mr. P.M. Burchsmith, then Magistrate, in a huff adjourned court and refused to sit until the overflow was stopped and the place cleaned up.
I understand Mr. Sullivan is now responsible for Magistrate’s Courts. If he has the authority, and if not him then whosoever has the authority, should immediately identify better government buildings within Anna Regina and Charity, refurbish them and have them gazetted to be used as courts, and then remove those courts from those two buildings. For security reasons the courts may have to be near to the police stations.
At Anna Regina there is the newly reconstructed CID office right in the station compound. It is spacious and will accommodate the court nicely.
The police should take over the whole station building and give that new building for court use. At Charity a proper building could be identified. This would be just a temporary arrangement.
The Government has been telling us that billions of dollars are allocated for the justice system. Some of that should urgently go into constructing new courts at Anna Regina and Charity, and also at Aurora, where the court building was demolished for years now, for it is an absolute disgrace to us when strangers see the places where we administer our justice.
Kumar D. Doobay

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