Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister, Anil Nandlall, SC has disclosed that the Law Reform Commission will be “up and running” before the end of July.
During his weekly social media programme “Issues in the News”, he noted that the Commission, which is an advisory body that can recommend the reform of existing laws, will be more broad-based and inclusive.
“When this Law Reform Commission will be up and running, then we will have a lot of input from stakeholder organisations and we will have a lot of input from members of public, hopefully, which will drive the law reform process,” Nandlall said.
“Because one of the responsibilities of the Law Reform Commission or its major responsibility would be to receive recommendations from civil society, from stakeholder organisations and from right across the spectrum of the Guyanese population.”
According to Nandlall, this will be especially important when law reform proposals are laid in the National Assembly since the consultations that would be required would have already been done by the Commission.
“We want to get this Law Reform Commission up and running. It has been absent in Guyana for a long long time. We should have had this institution within our legal infrastructure for a while now, unfortunately that did not happen, and we are in the process of completing the establishment of this important institution.”
The Law Reform Commission seeks to reform and modernise Guyana’s laws—the majority of which were inherited from its colonial masters and are long overdue for review.
The APNU+AFC Government had established the Law Reform Commission Act, but failed to set up the Commission. In fact, Nandlall had revealed that the former Government splurged approximately $98.3 million on the Law Reform Commission with nothing to show for the spending.
Millions of dollars were spent on the rental of a building to house the Commission, payment of staff and other costs.
