The Grenada Bar Association has taken note of a statement issued by the Ministry of Legal Affairs appearing on the Government of Grenada’s website in which the Bar is portrayed as peddling untruths.
The Bar is therefore constrained to respond to this unnecessary distraction.
The Bar stands by its statement issued on 28 February 2020. We remain, as always, a necessary stakeholder and partner in achieving solutions to the problems affecting our legal system.
It is an undisputable fact that due to the state of disrepair and presence of mould, among other reasons, the building housing the Supreme Court Registry must of necessity be closed. The resulting relocation of services cannot be achieved without disruption except a carefully planned multi-sectoral approach is adopted. The evidence available to the Bar when we released our earlier statement and to date, gives no comfort that such planning is in progress with the sufficiency required to ensure that relocation will be achieved seamlessly. By any objective standard, the authorities had sufficient notice of the issues affecting the Registry so as to plan properly to address them. That the Registry remains open after confirmation of the presence of dangerous mould illustrates the absence of proper planning or worse, a reckless disregard for the health of all who use the Registry.
We continue to urge the authorities who are responsible for managing the process of rectifying the conditions at the Registry while ensuring the continuity of the Registry services to do so urgently, responsibly and effectively. The protection of human health and the security of the critical contents of the Registry must be paramount in this process. This is most certainly not the time for a puerile focus on semantics and gamesmanship.
Grenada Bar Association
