ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC—James Bristol, a former lawyer normal of Grenada in the course of the Tillman Thomas administration, believes that the Public Sector Staff (Pension Fund) Invoice 2024, which was permitted within the Decrease Home of Parliament final week, is unconstitutional as a result of it circumvents a number of sections of the structure.
James Bristol
The Invoice, which seeks to determine a contributory pension scheme for public sector workers presently on contract and all who shall be employed with the Authorities sooner or later, is up for approval within the Higher Home on December 27.
The mandated cost to the plan, which a belief will handle, is three p.c of a public officer’s wage with an identical three p.c from the Authorities.
“You’ll be able to 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,” mentioned Bristol, 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 Individuals’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 permitted a validation act for a number of items of laws of the PRG Authorities to proceed.
Regardless of being permitted by the Herbert Blaize Authorities following the 1984 normal 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,” mentioned the Judgement.
Bristol mentioned if somebody is coming into the general public service on a short lived foundation to fill in whereas somebody is off sick, on maternity depart, or finishing up a selected challenge that can take a yr or two, that’s honest sufficient.
“However the place you will have somebody like nursing workers, which is a everlasting job, and when you will have somebody on contract to fill that job, that’s unconstitutional; that’s making an attempt to bypass part 84 of the structure,” mentioned Bristol.
“So, the contract employees which the federal government made the music and dance about and that the earlier administration tried to take away from the system are by this invoice being faraway from the prevailing pension rights assured by part 92 of the structure,” he added.
“This act is barely going to end in extra litigation, and we simply completed a litigation, and the general public officers had been promised those that should regularise shall be regularised,” he mentioned in an interview.
“The federal government has to chew the monetary bullet, put everyone who is meant to be in, and also you don’t want any of this verbiage right here,” mentioned Bristol.
As soon as the Higher Home approves it, the following step is approval from the Workplace of the Authorities and publication within the gazette.
The Authorities hopes that the Invoice will change into an Act of Parliament in January 2025 as soon as it’s permitted.
