New board appointed to Legal Aid and Advisory Authority

The Ho­n­ourable De­vesh Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, pre­sent­ed in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment to the new­ly ap­point­ed board of the Le­gal Aid & Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny held at the Au­thor­i­ty’s head of­fice to­day.

Min­is­ter Ma­haraj con­grat­u­lat­ed the new board mem­bers and un­der­scored the crit­i­cal role they will play in ad­vanc­ing the gov­er­nance, over­sight and strate­gic di­rec­tion of the Au­thor­i­ty.

“You all can count on me to cham­pi­on your cause,” he told board mem­bers, adding that they are en­trust­ed with shap­ing the strate­gic di­rec­tion of the Au­thor­i­ty, strength­en­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ef­fec­tive­ness and en­sur­ing ser­vices re­main aligned with the needs of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ap­point­ment comes as the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty ap­proach­es 50 years of ser­vice.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the new board is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide guid­ance aimed at strength­en­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery, en­hanc­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and sup­port­ing the on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion of le­gal aid ser­vices in keep­ing with the min­istry’s man­date.

The min­istry and the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty said they re­main com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing ac­cess to jus­tice through re­form ini­tia­tives, ex­pand­ed out­reach and the con­tin­ued en­hance­ment of le­gal aid ser­vices to en­sure no in­di­vid­ual is de­nied le­gal sup­port be­cause of fi­nan­cial or so­cial bar­ri­ers.

The new­ly ap­point­ed board com­pris­es:

Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, chair­man

Anand Singh

Ashook Bal­roop

Deb­o­rah Moore-Mig­gins

Ria Mo­hammed

Sher­vonne Bruno-Pierre

Satie Mani­ram-Kho­dai

Trudy Lewis