Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

At the reception for the Heads of Government conference last year at the Sandals Grande Hotel in St. Lucia, you said to me that you had received copies of letters which I had written to the Accountant General and copied to you concerning the non-payment of my pension and gratuity. You said that you would look into the matter.

On 5th February this year (2006) I approached you and told you that I had not receive my gratuity. You again promised to look into the matter.

Three weeks ago I spoke by telephone to the Accountant General, Mrs. Ernestine Hodge. I enquired of her when I would be paid my gratuity. Her response was that at the end of the month, after the payment of monthly salaries, she would then see what money was left then she would make a decision.

To date I have heard nothing. I have retired as Court of Appeal Judge since 28th November, 2003. I have served the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) for 34 years, faithfully, diligently and with distinction. No one can honestly challenge this statement. I have served as High Court Judge for 11 years and 7 years as a Court of Appeal Judge.

In December 2004, I met with the Accountant General for the first time. I had not known the good lady before that date. I met with her to enquire about my gratuity and pension payments. I was then told by Mrs. Hodge that the matter had to be taken to Cabinet so that Cabinet could make an award.

The method of payment, the manner of payment and the method of calculation of the payment for the pension and gratuity of a retiring judge are all governed by statute.

However, thereafter, I enquired almost weekly when my matter would be taken to Cabinet. Some of these enquiries were directed to a member of your Cabinet and I was told by that member of Cabinet that he had asked the Honourable Attorney General on my behalf when the matter would be taken to Cabinet.

I was told that the Honourable and distinguished Attorney General said, laughingly, that I had made him lose a case. I have absolutely no doubt that the Attorney General had said these words.

I know the case to which he made reference. Because in that matter in which I presided in the sitting of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Simon displayed what I regarded as unprofessional conduct. With a tearful outburst he said the court could do what it wanted. Mr. Simon however made a written apology to each member of the court.

At that time, I accepted his apology unreservedly. However in my view he has reopened that issue by saying that I had made him lose a case when asked by his Cabinet colleague when he would take my matter to Cabinet.

I was horrified and disappointed that such utterance should come from Mr. Simon, because prior to that, I had a lot of respect for him. I was of the view that Mr. Simon practiced the law in highest traditions of the bar. I was sadly mistaken.

Mr. Simon, I assumed was a responsible practitioner who has been in practice for a long time. He ought to have realised that if he was dissatisfied with a decision of the Court of Appeal, that he should advise his client to take the matter further and not to use his power to victimize me, by delaying the taking of my matter to Cabinet for the payment of my pension and gratuity.

I have written countless letters and made numerous telephone calls to the Accountant General and all were ignored except for one letter from her dated 17th August 2005. In that letter she said that she was responding to my letters of 11th March 2005 and 6th June 2005.

I wrote to the Honorable Attorney General pointing out to him that Justice of Appeal Satrohan Singh retired in January 2003 that on the date of his retirement he received from the St. Kitts government the payment of his gratuity in full and thereafter regular payment of his monthly pension.

Justice Suzie d¹Auvergne retired in October 2005 and by December 2005 she was in receipt of her gratuity payments and is now in receipt of her monthly pension from the St. Lucia Government. This letter was copied to the Accountant General. A few days later, on 7th October 2005, my wife received a telephone call from retired judge Mr. Justice Ephraim Georges who told my wife that the Accountant General told him that she had received a letter from me and that she had just placed it on file.

Indeed the Accountant General had received a letter from me. The letter to the Attorney general which I copied to her. How would Justice Ephraim Georges have known that if she did not tell him?

However what was most distressing is that Justice Ephraim Georges would be a messenger for that kind of news. Justice Georges was a judge for many years. He ought to have known of the provision that a judge is required to nominate the country in which his pension and gratuity would be paid on retirement and that provision, in my view was meant to secure the prompt payment of the retiring judge¹s pension and gratuity.

Justice Georges however, went on to say that the Accountant General said I should read JOB .(the Bible)
A judge invariably during his career serves more than one country. It, therefore, make good sense that in order to avoid delay and complications one country pays all the benefits up front to the retiring judge.

But that country would only be responsible for, I am advised, one sixth of the payment. The other member states of the OECS through their contributions make up the balance. As I have said, I retired on 28th November, 2003. I was not paid one cent of my pension until the end of March 2005, fourteen months after my retirement and yet I was not paid the full amount. How was I supposed to take care of myself and my family for that period, beg?

Judges, particularly those with children to maintain, cannot have savings from salaries which they are paid. I had two boys to educate. I was spared from the gross indignity of begging by the intervention of the Honorable Chief Justice, Sir Dennis Byron who offered me a contract to stay on the court as an acting High Court Judge and with the approval of Judicial and Legal Services Commission and the kind concurrence of the government of St. Lucia, I was able to stay on the court for another three years as an acting High Court Judge.

Mr. Prime Minister, in my considered opinion, the independence of the Judiciary is seriously undermined when a retired judge is treated with utter contempt in the pursuit of his right to the payment of his pension and gratuity. Moreover when he is made to wait for two years and four months and is still not paid without any explanation.

I say that because no judge who has to go through that indignity, humiliation, insults and embarrassment in order to obtain his pension and gratuity which he has earned could command the respect and confidence of the litigant or would be litigant. The respect and confidence which is vital in sustaining the independence of the judiciary.

Moreover, the judges who are to follow must learn about my plight, my embarrassment, the contemptuous manner in which I am being treated, the length of time I am made to wait in order to get my pension and gratuity, will surely point the judges who are to follow towards the way to corruption, God help us all if that were to happen.

In view of the foregoing, I call upon the authorities to revisit the practice where Civil Servants have the final say in determining when a judge is paid his pension and gratuity upon retirement. We, judges serve in small island states where everybody knows everybody. A judge may therefore inadvertently offend, through his decision, the very person or a member of his family who is responsible for making payment to the retiring judge. That offending party will see it as an opportunity to get even with the judge, by deliberately delaying payments of the judge¹s benefits.

May I, therefore, with respect, suggest that a budget should be given to the Supreme Court to make the payments of pension and gratuities to retiring judges, thereby giving the court the sole responsibility for the payment of pension and gratuities.

In that way most of the problems outlined above would be eliminated so that judges who are to follow would not be subjected to such humiliation, embarrassment, indignity and insults as I am made to endure.

With kind regards

Yours faithfully

Albert J. Redhead

Cc: The Hon. Chief Justice
Dr. The Hon. Kenny Anthony
Dr. The Hon. Keith Mitchell
Dr. The Hon. Denzil Douglas
Dr. The Hon. Ralph Gonsalves
Dr. The Hon. Orlando Smith
The Hon. Mr. Rosevelt Skerritt
The Hon. Mr. Osborne Fleming
The Hon. Mr. John Osborne
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights
The President of the Caribbean Bar Association