Dear Editor,
May I first say that the establishment of a Commercial Court in Guyana was a step in the right direction. However, over the years since the court has been established the number of issues that it has had to deal with has increased tremendously.
Credit must be given to Justice Rishi Persaud, the Commercial Court judge, who is very approachable and handles matters quite efficiently. There are, however, some matters which need urgent attention. First the workload is so heavy that there is need to have an additional judge. In addition the supporting staff of the Commercial Court must be properly trained so that they would appreciate and understand how important it is for decisions given to be implemented.
At present when the Commercial Judge makes an Order, the processing of that Order falls into the stream of the normal administrative system, and as a result there are always delays.
This in itself creates problems because of unusual delays in the administrative process; in order to have an efficient Commercial Court the staff must be specially trained. Commercial issues need to be resolved speedily and that is one of the reasons that a Commercial Court was established in the first place, but because of the problems I have pointed out the system is not efficient.
There are many occasions where matters are efficiently dealt with at the court level but the procedure thereafter to have the matter completed sometimes gets very complicated and results in very long delays. I have knowledge of members of the public who bitterly complain that having obtained an Order it is very difficult to get the result from that Order owing to the problems in the Registry.
My suggestion is that the time has come for a reassessment of the working of the Commercial Court in an effort to determine what steps ought to be taken to make it more efficient.
Yours faithfully,
Jonas MF Coddett
