Justice Minister addresses delays in court upgrades in St James
Published:Monday | June 25, 2018 | 10:11 AM
Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has indicated that architectural plans are now under consideration towards providing additional facilities for the St James Parish Court.
Chuck announced plans to upgrade the court more than a year ago.
He gave the update while speaking to reporters following his address at a judicial training seminar for case-flow management in Jamaica’s courts at the Melia Braco Village Resort in Rio Bueno, Trelawny yesterday.
“To the best of my knowledge, what is happening now is that they (architects) are doing a concept as to what can be done with the upstairs of the Montego Bay courts. At the moment we have not gotten a final concept paper from the architects,” said Chuck.
“We have funding that could be used to start the renovation. We had planned to put another court in the centre between the present court and the Montego Bay Number One Post Office, where we could have all-year sittings of the circuit court in Montego Bay. The truth is that it is still under consideration,” noted Chuck.
Last February, Chuck announced that a section of the Montego Bay Number One Post Office, which adjoins the parish court, would be converted into additional space for extra court facilities.
He said then that the work would take two years.
Chuck yesterday admitted that there had been no interest from architects to work on the project.
“This project has taken much longer than I anticipated, as we had put in an advertisement for architects to do the design, but there was no one forthcoming, so we put out the advertisement again,” said Chuck.
He also gave an update on plans to relocate the St James Family Court to a bigger facility.
“We are now working to move the present court to Cottage Road. We’re in touch with the landlord and we’re getting more than 10,000 square feet to move the family court there,” said Chuck.
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