AG Believes Court Prosecutors are Legitimately Absent From Work

Anthony Sylvestre

That’s the immediate impact of crown counsels being missing from work for the past two days.  As we’ve previously reported, their absence coincides with the start of the October session of the High Court.  Prior to the sickout, however, the dissatisfaction of as many as eleven prosecutors had been relayed to Attorney General Anthony Sylvestre when he assumed office back in July.  Those concerns had to do with security or security allowances not being provided.  It also had to do with them not being paid proportionately to their respective responsibilities.  But is their absence a mere coincidence or is it a deliberate act to send a stern message?  When asked earlier today, Attorney General Anthony Sylvestre told the reporters that he believes wholeheartedly that prosecutors are indeed sick.

Anthony Sylvestre, Attorney General

“There are a couple crown counsels who called in sick yesterday… five.  Thank you for that correction.  I take that at face value and I believe that that is genuine, I mean, crown counsels, as you know, they are officers of the Crown, no less.  They are ministers of justice and certainly, I would not think that any of our crown [counsels] would misrepresent the state of affairs with respect to their health.  And so, I take at face value that those who called in sick are indeed sick.  Secondly, I should point out that there are some inaccuracies with respect to what is ventilated in the media.  Currently there are, whilst persons have called in sick, there are presently crowns and there are presently other persons who are ensuring that the business of the courts continues and I should point out as well that we are in constant communication and actually we are in dialogue with the crown counsels.  We have a further meeting, so speaking for myself, it being a matter of an employer and an employee relationship, certainly it affects, there’s a public interest in it but it’s a continuing dialog and we are in fact supposed to have a meeting on Friday.  So, as I indicated earlier, I don’t regard this as a sickout, I regard this as the crowns legitimately sending, calling in and indicating that they are sick.”