Discussion Held on Establishing Municipal Courts in Other Districts

A consultation exercise was held on Tuesday with mayors and key administrative staff from town and city councils across Belize on a proposed initiative to open municipal courts in all six districts. The Department of Local Government spearheaded the one-day session in order that the relevant authorities will be able to better understand the legal and administrative dynamics of managing and operating the Belize City municipal courts. It also serves to assist the participants to grasp the legal and administrative processes and procedures when establishing Magistrate Court in jurisdictions other than Belize City where a municipal court already exists. The session is part of government’s objective and that of allocating sustainable financing for municipal governments. Belize City currently only has one declared place of sitting for a municipal or a magistrate’s court, established in 1997. Today, C.E.O. in the Ministry of Local Government, Valentino Shal explained to News Five that the other five municipalities see establishing municipal courts in their jurisdictions as something that will significantly improve the capacity of town and city councils in resolving matters that relate to municipal courts, such as traffic laws, property tax matters, garbage and littering offenses.

Valentino Shal

Valentino Shal, C.E.O., Ministry of Local Government

“So far, only Belize City has such a court and it has worked well for them, and the other councils are very interested in adopting this model, and so – but before we, we go wholesale and adopt it, we want to see how it’s working, how we can improve it, and so that is why we are currently under consultations. Yesterday we had a very good session with the mayors and the Attorney General’s Ministry to discuss this matter, and to discuss the different elements that go into ensuring that we have a very effective court system for municipalities. This court would be specifically to deal with the issues pertaining to towns and city councils, hopefully making it more efficient and to address those matters that it needs to – it needs judicial attention on.”

Marion Ali

“Let me ask this, CEO, and it’s my last question, because it’s been known in the recent past too that Belize has been short of magistrates, per se. Would we be able to have the human resources to appoint to all these different courts now when they do open up or are established countrywide?”

Valentino Shal

“That’s a very good question, and that’s precisely why we’re undergoing this consultation process, because we have to see that it is efficient to have courts in each district, or perhaps a more efficient approach would be to have regional municipal courts. So for instance, you have one for the south, one for the east, one for the north, and one for the west. So instead of having six different courts, you can have maybe three or four, because you need to also ensure that the courts have sufficient cases to keep them active. You don’t want to have a court that’s open and there’s no, they’re not doing any work. So the final structure of what municipal courts would look like, it’s still some ways down the road, we have not finalized that. But we do want to make sure that it’s effective and efficient, and there are several considerations. The cost, for instance: will municipalities be able to afford the operations of these courts? And of course, as you rightly pointed out, do we have sufficient persons to act as magistrates in this instance? And so it’s a work in progress.”