Legal Aid Authority marks 50 years of service

The Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty (LAAA) has marked 50 years of pro­vid­ing le­gal as­sis­tance to peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with of­fi­cials high­light­ing its role in mak­ing jus­tice more ac­ces­si­ble.

The Au­thor­i­ty cel­e­brat­ed the mile­stone on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 25, with an an­niver­sary event un­der the theme, “Where We Were, Look At Us Now: 50 Years of Le­gal Ex­cel­lence: A Cel­e­bra­tion.”

The event brought to­geth­er Chief Jus­tice, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Jus­tice, mem­bers of the LAAA Board and man­age­ment, cur­rent and for­mer em­ploy­ees and oth­er jus­tice sec­tor stake­hold­ers.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al De­vesh Ma­haraj high­light­ed the Au­thor­i­ty’s im­por­tance in pro­vid­ing le­gal ad­vice and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly to peo­ple who may be un­able to af­ford pri­vate le­gal ser­vices.

Ma­haraj said the Au­thor­i­ty had grown over the past five decades be­cause of the com­mit­ment of gen­er­a­tions of staff who recog­nised the im­por­tance of the ser­vice they pro­vide.

He not­ed that the LAAA had ex­pand­ed from an or­gan­i­sa­tion with a small com­ple­ment of at­tor­neys to one with five of­fices serv­ing com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The of­fices are lo­cat­ed in Port of Spain, Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go.

Di­rec­tor and chair­man of the LAAA Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan al­so paid trib­ute to the Au­thor­i­ty’s em­ploy­ees, de­scrib­ing it as a priv­i­lege to serve and work with the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions in­clud­ed the pre­sen­ta­tion of long-ser­vice awards to em­ploy­ees in recog­ni­tion of their years of ded­i­ca­tion and con­tri­bu­tion to the Au­thor­i­ty.

Awards were al­so pre­sent­ed to key in­di­vid­u­als who served the or­gan­i­sa­tion over the years.

The Min­istry of Jus­tice and the LAAA said they re­main com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing ac­cess to le­gal ser­vices as the Au­thor­i­ty en­ters its next 50 years.

They said the con­tin­ued goal is to en­sure that ac­cess to jus­tice re­mains avail­able to peo­ple across Trinidad and To­ba­go.