ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC—James Bristol, a former lawyer basic of Grenada in the course of the Tillman Thomas administration, believes that the Public Sector Workers (Pension Fund) Invoice 2024, which was authorized within the Decrease Home of Parliament final week, is unconstitutional as a result of it circumvents a number of sections of the structure.
The Invoice, which is up for approval within the December 27 sitting of the Higher Home, seeks to determine a contributory pension scheme for public sector workers presently on contract and all who will probably be employed with the Authorities sooner or later.
The mandated cost to the plan {that a} belief will handle is three p.c of a public officer’s wage with an identical three p.c from the Authorities.
“You possibly can have public officers, however you can’t circumvent the structure by inserting somebody who holds a everlasting submit on a contract of an indefinite interval. The structure is being circumvented by using this course of,” stated Bristol, who was the lawyer who efficiently argued earlier than the Excessive Court docket that the Pension Disqualification Act of 1983 was unconstitutional.
That laws was a product of the Folks’s Revolutionary Authorities (PRG). Throughout that interval, Grenada’s structure was suspended.
When constitutional democracy was returned after the collapse of the PRG, the Parliament authorized a validation act for a number of items of laws of the PRG Authorities to proceed.
Regardless of being authorized by the Herbert Blaize Authorities following the 1984 basic election, the Pension Disqualification Act was declared unconstitutional in March 2022 by Excessive Court docket Choose Raulston Glasgow after a protracted battle.
“The Pensions (Disqualification) Act Cap. 230A is unconstitutional, null and void,” stated the Judgement.
Bristol stated if somebody is getting into the general public service on a brief foundation to fill in whereas somebody is off sick, on maternity depart, or finishing up a selected mission that may take a 12 months or two, that’s honest sufficient.
“However the place you’ve gotten somebody like nursing employees, which is a everlasting job, and when you’ve gotten somebody on contract to fill that job, that’s unconstitutional; that’s trying to avoid part 84 of the structure,” stated Bristol.
“So, the contract employees which the federal government made the tune and dance about and that the earlier administration tried to take away from the system are by this invoice being faraway from the present pension rights assured by part 92 of the structure,” he added.
“This act is simply going to end in extra litigation, and we simply completed a litigation, and the general public officers have been promised those that need to regularise will probably be regularised,” he stated in an interview.
“The federal government has to chunk the monetary bullet, put everyone who is meant to be in, and also you don’t want any of this verbiage right here,” stated Bristol.
As soon as the Higher Home approves it, the subsequent step is approval from the Workplace of the Authorities and publication within the gazette.
The Authorities hopes that the Invoice will turn out to be an Act of Parliament in January 2025 as soon as it’s authorized.
