by Linda Straker
- Lower House approved Public Sector Employees (Pension Fund) Bill 2024 last week
- Bill is up for approval in 27 December Upper House sitting
- James Bristol believes bill circumvents several sections of Grenada Constitution
Last week, the Public Sector Employees (Pension Fund) Bill 2024 was approved in the Lower House of Parliament.
James Bristol, a former attorney general of Grenada during the Tillman Thomas administration, believes that the bill is unconstitutional because it is circumventing several sections of the Grenada Constitution.
The bill which is up for approval in the 27 December sitting of the Upper House, seeks to establish a contributory pension scheme for public sector employees currently on contract and all who will be employed with government in the future. The mandated payment to the plan which will be managed by a trust is 3% of a public officer’s salary with a matching 3% from the government.
“You can have public officers, but you cannot circumvent the constitution by placing someone who is really holding a permanent post on a contract, a contract of an indefinite period. The constitution is being circumvented by utilising this process,” said Bristol.
Bristol previously successfully argued before the High Court that the Pension Disqualification Act of 1983 was unconstitutional. That legislation was a product of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), which suspended Grenada’s constitution. When constitutional democracy was returned after the collapse of the PRG, parliament approved a validation act to allow several pieces of legislation of the PRG Government to continue.
Though getting validation approval from the Herbert Blaize Government following the 1984 General Elections, after a long battle the Pensions (Disqualification) Act Cap. 230A was declared “unconstitutional, null and void,” in March 2022 by High Court Judge Raulston Glasgow.
Bristol said if someone is entering the public service on a temporary basis to fill in while someone is off sick, or on maternity leave or there is a particular project to be carried out which will take a year or 2, that’s fair enough.
“But where you have someone like nursing staff which is a permanent job and when you have someone on contract to fill that job, that’s unconstitutional, that is attempting to circumvent Section 84 of the constitution,” said Bristol.
“So, the contract workers which the government made the song and dance about and that the previous administration tried to remove from the system are, by this bill being removed from the existing pension, rights guaranteed by Section 92 of the constitution,” he added.
“This act is only going to result in more litigation, and we just finished a litigation, and the public officers were promised those who have to be regularised will be regularised,” he said in an interview with Dr Kellon Bubb.
“The government has to bite the financial bullet, put everybody in who is supposed to be in. You don’t need any of this verbiage here,” said Bristol.
Once it receives the approval of the Upper House, the next step is approval from the Office of the Governor-General and publication in the Government Gazette. The Government is hoping that the Bill, once it gets the approval to become an Act of Parliament, will go into effect in January 2025.
Is it a case that the workers in permanent spots should be regularized before the new act comes into existence?
Is Mr. Bristol contending that all eligible public sector workers should be on the establishment prior to enacting the new law/ laws regarding pension.
I would want to think that 1. The “Consitutionality Issue” would be first addressed by the Government BEFORE passing this Bill into law, and 2. That the Governor General is apprised of its constitutional status BEFORE she has to sign off on the Act.