Court marshals doing their best in spite of limitations

Court marshals operating from the Court Process Office are doing their best to fast track the serving of summonses and other documents, in spite of the limited numbers at that office.

Senior Court Marshal in the Court Process Office, Rosanne Allder, pointed out the above recently, noting that the focus at present is on maintenance and traffic matters and reducing the backlog in relation to documents that have to be served in these main areas.

“What we do here is that we process any documents coming from the Supreme Court, the Magistrates Court or sometimes people come in and ask for assistance and we try to give it to them in the form of advice, so that they can also go through the Court system,” Allder explained.

“We have coming through here maintenance, criminal summons, Supreme Court summons that we refer to as High Court summonses. We have traffic summons, which has been a great thorn in our side for I don’t know how long, but we recently came up with an idea and we are out now in bundles trying to address that. We started with the Eagle Hall section and most recently we dealt with the van stand and in a few more weeks, we will be going out again. Note that in those two days, we did over 200 documents, which I think is a great success and we will continue that,” Allder said.

“We are having some difficulties in relation to the wrong names being given to the police officers when (persons) are being reported or the right name is given, but the wrong address. So because of that, the traffic summons seem to be stagnating and in a great abundance, (but) we have a remedy for that situation now,” the senior court marshal further indicated.

“In terms of maintenance now, we are telling the young ladies, when they come in to us, bring some form of ID for the gentleman (by which to) identify him.

“So for now, that is also working and the criminal matters, they are going pretty good. So all in all, I would say our Department down here is functioning. Although we are short-staffed, we have been able to utilise that short amount of staff that we have,” she told The Barbados Advocate.

Stressing that the numbers are now down from 77 to 40, Allder said that in spite of the pressure this brings in trying to operate effectively and efficiently, staff members are doing what they can, until additional staff come.

Her comments came during the recent Open Day hosted by the Registration Department at its White Park Road, St. Michael office in the Supreme Court Complex. (RSM)