Christ Church South Member of Parliament Dr Shantal Munro-Knight has appealed for improvement in the way child maintenance matters are handled in the Magistrates’ Court system.
She told the House of Assembly yesterday she was continually receiving complaints from young women who come to her constituency clinic expressing “frustration and hurt” at the way they are treated within the system and the untenable delays in getting action on their cases.
“This issue of justice and how people experience justice and their interface with our court system is one . . . that we have a responsibility [to] get right as much as possible. This is the issue of child maintenance and the multiple delays within the Magistrates’ Court system.”
She said there were women who had to take time off work; find someone to take care of their children if they were not in school; and forced to sit in the court for many hours, with nobody saying anything to them, only to be subjected sometimes to repeated adjournments of their cases. Munro-Knight, who is also Minister of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security, raised the issue during debate on the Magistrates’ Court (Amendment) Bill
piloted by Minister of Legal Affairs and Criminal Justice Michael Lashley. The legislation proposes to bring virtual hearings to the Magistrates’ Court, just as obtains in some instances in the High Court.
Munro-Knight contended that very often the matters which come up before the Magistrates’ Court were “matters for the average Bajan, for women and young girls as well, who need to be able to come to the court and depend on the court”.
She pointed out that during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was accepted that matters of the court in some respects could be handled online, but regretted that “all of a sudden, COVID has passed us, we have forgotten and therefore now again we retreat to what is traditional and known, rather than taking the lessons that we have learnt about the way that technology and virtual hearings can still serve as a critical asset and enabler for the court system”.
She said while it was accepted that Barbados could have large pieces of legislation which were over-arching and important, “unless we attempt to address those things that the average people deal with every day, then the impact of our governance will not be felt as strongly at it should be”. (GC)
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