'Respect independence of Judiciary, PSA'

PUBLIC Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke and several judiciary workers ended an overnight vigil outside the Hall of Justice, Port of Spain, early yesterday morning, hoping to press the judiciary into dialogue and full disclosure regarding its mass restructuring plans.

Duke, in an interview following inter-religious opening prayers, also called for the independence of the judiciary and the role of the Public Services Association (PSA) to be respected and preserved. This vision is to continue putting up a resistance to a process within the judiciary, which is their executive management, said Duke.

“They have continuously acted outside the workers’ interest by not providing them with proper information with what they are going to do, because I’m convinced they’re going to lose their jobs. They’ve said by the first of September, all vacant positions will be abolished.”

The workers’ issues, Duke said, do not lie in judiciary’s restructuring, but the “lack of full disclosure,” which he said means a break down of vacancies, detail of salaries and criteria for selection of the workers’ internal movement, in addition to potential job losses.

“What are opposed to is sending workers home, and the restructuring (of the judiciary) means the bill is going to remain the same, health and safety concerns going to be the same but the workers, they’re getting rid of them and I can tell you now, the clerk of the peace will be losing their jobs and their salary is about $13,000.”

Clerks of the peace, he added, will be replaced by registrars with salaries at about $21,000. On the PSA’s role in the hiring of workers, Duke said, “Our objective is to, first of all, preserve the independence of the judiciary by ensuring that when persons are hired here, they are hired by an independent body - the service commission.

“The judiciary’s objective seems to be one where they remove hiring from the service commission and they want to hire their own people, which could turn out political because you want to hire persons on contract for the same year as a politician, which is five years maximum and then you know what, if UNC comes in, PNM people go, and that’s wrong.

"You can’t have independence like that,” Duke said the bottom line is their need for clarity of both parties’ objectives.