Despite intense grilling on monies for a single employee being paid over $1M per month and for security services, the $2.1B budget allocation proposed for the Ministry of Legal Affairs was on Tuesday evening approved unanimously by the Committee of Supply.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall defended allocations under his ministry and subsectors for current and capital expenditure and where he could not at the time provide answers, he promised to make them available for the house.
Nandlall said that consolidating improvements in the operations of the justice system will see greater efficiency, more judges, better trained police prosecutors, better resourced magisterial districts and expansion of the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) into the administrative regions.
On scrutiny of Line Item 6112, APNU MP Deborah Backer pointed out that last year one person was performing three functions at a salary of $3.6M annually. This year, she said, that was increased by $9M and she wanted to know the salary of that person and the reason for the increase. “Last year, it was one person and $3.6M. Now, we have one person still and there has been a $9M increase… we hear about three offices merged but it is one person. It is one person,” she stressed.
Nandlall explained that the ministry had merged three offices into one—the Public Trustee, the State Solicitor and the Official Receiver—and aptly pays the employee who previously performed the functions more money.
“It was thought rather than save three separate mergers to consolidate the functional responsibilities into a singular officer, create a singular unit and merge three departments into one. That is the reason why there is the increase in expenditure,” he said.
“The gross salary is $1,018,500 per month. This person has been… performing three functions and has been doing so for a number of years and therefore it was felt to increase her enumeration to adequately compensate that person for the work she has been doing,” Nandlall added, while noting that the employee was the longest serving member of the legal department.
However when the salary of a typist clerk was listed as $41,500, it drew laments from the opposition of “Ow Lord!” and “Pay the people more, Anil!”
Nandlall was also questioned on infrastructural works done on the High Court and Magistrates’ Courts countrywide and security services countrywide.
APNU’s James Bond questioned the increase in security services while Speaker of the House Raphael Trotman, presiding as Chairman of the Committee of Supply, highlighted the fact that the metal components of the fence of the High Court was stolen and he wanted to know if any security provider was surcharged for this.
Nandlall informed that the security company, Strategic Action Security, which was contracted at the time, had been asked to compensate for the loss.
The budget also provides for revision of the Laws of Guyana up to 2010 and for the Supreme Court to launch a website on the statuses of cases.
