Govt to bring several key priority bills to House

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day not­ed that over the last sev­en months, Gov­ern­ment has al­ready brought 13 pieces of leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment and an­oth­er three were to be de­bat­ed yes­ter­day.

She al­so list­ed sev­er­al up­com­ing ma­jor bills which Gov­ern­ment in­tends to deal with mov­ing for­ward.

Up­com­ing pri­or­i­ty bills in­volve:

Crit­i­cal re­forms to the ju­di­cia­ry in­clud­ing Of­fice of Chan­cel­lor and mea­sures to ad­dress the de­liv­ery of jus­tice on the crim­i­nal side, to speed up jus­tice, pro­tect vic­tims’ rights with spe­cial at­ten­tion, leg­is­la­tion for speedy tri­als, re­form plea bar­gain­ing leg­is­la­tion.

• Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions bill rais­ing age lim­its for sale, pur­chase, pos­ses­sion or con­sump­tion of in­tox­i­cat­ing, in­tox­i­cat­ing liquor or to­bac­co, from 18 to 21 and sim­i­lar­ly for the sale, pur­chase, pos­ses­sion of con­sump­tion of cannabis. It will be raised from 21 to 25 in re­spect of gam­bling.

• Amend­ment to the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act con­cern­ing mar­i­jua­na, fol­low­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) alert of en­force­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges hin­der­ing ef­fec­tive polic­ing, in­clud­ing lack of clar­i­ty re­gard­ing four plants per per­son, lack of guide­lines to en­sure cul­ti­va­tion on­ly hap­pens in se­cure pri­vate spaces and the need to pro­hib­it cannabis use in pub­lic places.

• Law re­form on cannabis for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es, seek­ing to pro­vide con­trol of the han­dling of cannabis for spe­cif­ic pur­pos­es, es­tab­lish­ing an au­thor­i­ty - li­censed as­so­ci­a­tion for cannabis.

• Amend­ment of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice law re­gard­ing op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies caus­ing de­lays.

• Tweak­ing fire­works law work on; haz­ards, nui­sance and noise pol­lu­tion.

• Re­form­ing tri­al by judge alone for­mats to have three judges for cap­i­tal of­fences cas­es.

• Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill for right to a tri­al with­in a rea­son­able time.

• Strength­en­ing frame­work for de­struc­tion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, as well as stor­age/record keep­ing for arms and am­mu­ni­tion in pos­ses­sion of state agen­cies; and clear, se­cure dis­pos­al of seized, ob­so­lete or sur­ren­dered weapons.

• Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty In­dus­try Bill es­tab­lish­ing the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice Au­thor­i­ty and frame­work to gov­ern/su­per­vise pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms and per­son­nel, en­sur­ing they meet le­gal, op­er­a­tional and eth­i­cal stan­dards. It would es­tab­lish pro­ce­dures/re­quire­ments for li­cens­ing/op­er­at­ing pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, with mech­a­nisms for in­spec­tion/mon­i­tor­ing

• The Vir­tu­al As­sets Ser­vice providers bill to get T&T off in­ter­na­tion­al black­lists, since a re­view is due in March.

• Planned bail law re­gard­ing source of funds will al­so meet oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments for T&T to be re­moved from black­lists.