A move is on to have the Supreme Court reopened by April 1st this year.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Dale Marshall, gave the update this week as he responded to a number of questions posed to him during the continuing Estimates debate in the House of Assembly. The court has been closed for some time now to rectify a number of environmental issues on site.
“The move back to the home of the Supreme Court of Judicature will be completed by 1st of April 2019; or I should say on or before that date, normal service will have been resumed at that location,” Marshall said.
“The amount of work that had to be done on the existing building has been fairly significant. We have had to completely change a covering of the roof. You would remember that a lot of what affected the functioning of the court there was environmental difficulties, and that had to do with moisture which in turn was a result of poorly functioning air conditioning equipment and also poorly functioning sealant on the roof,” he explained.
“It was originally estimated that the cost of obtaining and applying the new sealant to the roof would have been about $900 000, but it turned out to be in the region of $1.8 million and of course when all the old stuffed was stripped off, other challenges were found. At this point, all of that structural work is finished and we took the opportunity to add an additional number of court rooms in the facility, so as to be able to accommodate some of the additional judges that we are bringing on board,” the Attorney General added.
He also revealed that the fumigation of the Registry has been completed and further fumigation and cleaning of the wider areas of the Supreme Court will take place, to the tune of half a million dollars. The files that were moved to other locations will also be cleaned before they are brought back, as well as some of the old furniture that was infested with mould, though some will have to be discarded.
“At this point, we are on stream and therefore we will be moving back into and have a fully functioning court back at White Park Road by the first of April,” the AG assured. (RSM)