MPs seek child maintenance reform in court backlog plan

M others seeking child maintenance face repeated adjournments and months of waiting in the magistrates’ courts, MPs told the House of Assembly as proposed reforms were introduced to reduce delays and allow remote hearings. Parliamentarians Dr Shantal Munro-Knight and Tyra Trotman said the everyday experience of people seeking justice remained a measure of governance, alongside the passage of national laws. Dr Munro-Knight, Christ Church South MP, highlighted the toll administrative delays take on vulnerable families. Drawing on cases from her constituency clinics, she described young mothers facing multiple adjournments over several months while seeking child maintenance. She said: “Those young women have to take time off of work. They have to take the children. They have to have somebody to be able to take care of them if they are not in school. “Then they sit down there for multiple hours.

Nobody says anything to them. And sometimes, it is not one adjournment, it is not two, but multiple adjournments to the extent that almost in one case that I have before me… she was still not able to get her matter heard satisfactorily. ” Dr Munro-Knight also addressed delays caused when magistrates are transferred or go on leave. She recounted speaking with a constituent whose case had stalled for years because the presiding magistrate had been moved. “She is asking me, a non-lawyer, so if that magistrate doesn’t come back, you mean to tell me that I can never get my case heard? ” Barbadians frequently describe the current system as “not fair”, she said. Tyra Trotman, St Michael Central MP, drew on her experience as a lawyer to describe how inadequate court facilities and outdated procedures cost attorneys and litigants time and money. She identified the closure of the St Matthias…