AG Chambers Outstanding Management and Response to Pandemic

The implementation of a State Of Emergency and its attendant emergency powers as part of the management of the national response to the Covid 19 Pandemic presented great challenges for the staff of the Office of the Attorney General. They were called upon to produce in a timely manner a series of Regulations to keep pace with the changing dynamics of the response over a protracted period.

This required a great deal of sacrifice of all within the Chambers in order to ensure that there was a secure legal footing at all relevant times. Attorney General Hon Vincent Byron reminisces about the experience recalling it to be one of a high pressure period.

“After the first set of regulations were passed there was a nightly curfew during the period until after elections and so the time to actually do work was very limited. There were days where there was a total lockdown where people had to be at home and in some cases we had to get them (parliamentary councils Karen Hughes and Alison Isaac) special permits to come to office as members of the Attorney General chambers and staff; they were deemed essential workers.”

Their duties were to draft regulations depending on the particular circumstance which had to be signed by his Excellency Governor General Sir Tapley Seaton and had to be rushed to the government printery .The dedicated staff at the Government Printery worked tirelessly to produce about 6-7 regulations which had to be tweaked, mended or changed depending on the recommendations of the chief medical officer and Dr Laws and Dr Camron Wilkinson the medical chief of staff at JNF (Joseph N France Hospital).

Hon Vincent Byron commends his team for a job well done in gathering all the necessary information in a matter of 2-3 weeks, being available 24/7 and working way beyond the call of duty during this period to produce this set of framework; it was all-in-all a major team effort.