Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 01, 2014 News
– Attorney General describes it as very disappointing
Attorney General Anil Nandlall has expressed his sheer disappointment at fellow lawyers for their dishonesty and illegality.
Nandlall yesterday accused lawyers of pirating the Law Reports of Guyana. They were also accused of pirating the revised Laws of Guyana, which were acquired through a loan from the Inter Development Bank under the Modernization of Justice Project.
The revised Laws of Guyana come in 18 volumes and are revised to 2010. They came after a 34-year hiatus and four failed attempts over these years.
It was Justice Claudette Singh who first accused some members of the legal profession of downloading and printing copies of the Laws of Guyana in which the Legal Affairs Ministry has invested millions.
According to Justice Claudette Singh, lawyers are not buying the books which the Ministry has made available. The judge said that while the Ministry is happy that reports are online for everyone to see, she is very disheartened at the fact that persons are being so “dishonest”.
Justice Singh had explained that being online is not something “cheap”. The Ministry has to pay “Lexum”, the company that the Ministry uses to be online, a hefty sum of over US$10,450 per year for the licence.
“If the books aren’t bought how anyone would expect the Ministry to generate the income to pay to be online?”
It is hard to get funding from banks to pay for it, she said. She said that lawyers should buy the book since it’s a service the Ministry is providing.
Back in January, the Ministry of Legal Affairs through its Project Secretariat for the Modernization of the Justice Administration System (MJAS) project launched the highly anticipated Laws of Guyana.
Nandlall noted that Law Volumes in any society are very instrumental to the development of Jurisprudence and to the advancement of law.
According to Nandlall every country has ensured that its laws are kept in a permanent form. He said that Guyana’s legal system embraces the rule within which courts must act. It is important that we have a report of what is decided to in our country, he added.
He said that this helps people within the country to know that the system doesn’t work erratically. According to Nandlall this helps with predictably in society.
The Courts have also cleared a 30-year backlog; the law reports cover from 1977 to 2007.
Commenting on the pirated Law Reports, Nandlall said that he has learnt of the horrendous reality of lawyer’s actually pirating the law reports by way of photocopying and selling them. He described it as a “sad state” of affairs coming from lawyers.
According to Nandlall the sole purpose to making the reports available was for lawyers to have better access to decisions in the courts and to help upgrade the justice sector.
“Unfortunately the response from the Bar Association is not good… It’s disappointing we have piles and piles of reports which have not been bought,” the Attorney General said yesterday.
The Law Reports was compiled and edited for the years 1977 to 2007 as one aspect of the Modernisation of the Justice Administration System project. The MJAS Project is funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) by way of a Loan to the Government of Guyana (GoG) and is implemented by the Ministry of Legal Affairs.
The MJAS programme was designed as a hybrid facility comprising a policy based component supported by a policy based loan of US$15M. A further investment and technical support component supported by an investment loan of US$10M was given.
The investment component was intended to help implement the policy reform programme and also support initial capacity building activities in the justice sector institutions.
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