Tribunals need full time staff

The backlog facing several tribunals can be addressed with the provision of full-time staff, believes Opposition Senator Caswell Franklyn.
“The problem with the Severance Payment tribunals and most other tribunals in Barbados regarding backlog is this, in the 1980s, the BLP administration passed legislation called the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act. It was passed and never brought into force. That Act should have taken care of the Severance Payment and Employment Rights tribunals, these appeals to the Town Planner and whatever else through setting up a proper system that was full time.

“The problem with these tribunals is that you depend on retired persons or persons who are actively working and busy in their own legal arrangement, so they can only take so much time out and you don’t pay them anything really because it is usually community service you are giving,” he explained.

Franklyn pointed for example to the case of the Grand Barbados Hotel workers made redundant in 2012, which has yet to be heard by the Employment Rights Tribunal.

“Three of them have died, so you know now their estates will not get anything because you have to go before a tribunal to give evidence. You are not going to be able to give evidence if you are dead! And since nobody has heard your evidence, your case if dead so that family will get nothing, so they have lost their loved one and have lost the money that person would have been entitled to if that case had been heard in a timely manner so rather than blame the NIS and the tribunal people for not working fast enough, you cannot work fast enough with the system you have,” he explained.

Franklyn therefore insisted that persons be employed full-time to address the backlog.

He argued there was no need to amend the Severance Payments Act, as the country was under a State of Emergency and Cabinet was allowed to do anything in its interest.

“So they could have said ‘We are going to suspend the provisions of the Severance Payment Act’, but you like to come in here and amend the Constitution. It does not make sense,” he said. (JMB)