By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

EAST Grand Bahama MP Kwasi Thompson wants the government to consider allowing the Magistrate’s Court to hear missing persons cases “in circumstances of peril”, noting the need to make the death declaration process faster for affected families.

 Speaking in the House of Assembly yesterday, Mr Thompson said nearly three years later, some families of missing Hurricane Dorian victims have still not had their loved ones declared dead and consequently received their death certificates.

 His comment came as members debated The Evidence (Amendment) (No 2) Bill, 2022.

 The proposed legislation will allow for people reported missing “in circumstances of peril” and have not been found in two years or more to be presumed dead by the courts.

 Mr Thompson said while he supports the amendment, he still believes there needs to be an easier and faster process for declaring those dead who disappear after perilous events.

 He pointed to the events that followed after Dorian, noting many families of victims whose bodies were never found after the storm are still seeking closure.

 As a result, he suggested other courts, like the Magistrate’s Court be utilised to help speed up the process.

 Mr Thompson said: “If the coroner has dealt with circumstances where persons go missing and so on, couldn’t we also allow in these kinds of circumstances, allow a magistrate to deal with these kinds of matters.”

 “A magistrate obviously would be, in my view, quicker, and it would certainly be cheaper and more accessible to be the ordinary person in terms of dealing with the circumstances and a coroner already deals with these kinds of matters.”

“So as opposed to leaving it with the Supreme Court, let’s see if we can look at giving the magistrate the jurisdiction to deal with situations of peril in your two-year amendment so, in your two-year amendment, allow the magistrate to be able to hear the evidence, the same evidence that a supreme court judge would. It would then allow the process to go through a bit quicker and it would allow the process to go through a bit less more expensive for persons to be able to deal with.”

 Responding, Prime Minister Phillip “Brave” Davis said the concept that the Coroner’s Court could deal with all of the Dorian related deaths is a “fallacy”.

“If you look at the act - the Coroner’s Act. First of all, the new Coroner’s Act was passed under your watch in 2011 which sort of modernized the whole concept - so a coroner is only engaged when you report a death, so you have to report a death,” Prime Minister Davis said.

 “Now, in the circumstances of peril, how are you going to report a death? Me and my family were together and had this Dorian catastrophe. We were separated. I went this way and I went the next way so all I’m doing is my family has being missing but since then, I have not seen them and I have not heard from them.

 “That is where the presumption comes in. That’s why when you look at the present law and it speaks to the seven years, it speaks on the count of not having heard from them in seven years so the only thing you could do is report a missing person but you can’t report a death and the coroner’s jurisdiction is only triggered when you report that someone has died.”

 Mr Thompson later clarified that he was not “arguing that the Coroner’s Inquest was the right or wrong jurisdiction” to hear such matters.

 “The point I’m raising is the coroner has already dealt with some matters and the coroner is in the process of dealing with some matters,” he responded to Mr Davis.

 Mr Thompson then called on the government to define peril” and further questioned their rationale to reduce the timeframe in which a person can be presumed dead by the courts.

“The next question is the law speaks to two years and I seek to understand the reasoning and the rationale for two years as opposed to one year or as opposed to three years,’’ he said.

 “For example, there were circumstances where I saw my loved one washed out to sea. I saw them where they were no longer with us. Should they have to wait two years? Why not six months? Why not in a time frame that it takes to do a proper investigation.”

 “And then once proper investigation is done, then they are able to apply as opposed to having a strict two-year period. Again, we have no objection to the two years but my question is why two years and how did we land on two years and whether is circumstances that I could show and I could and I could prove, shouldn’t I be able to do it at an earlier period of time?”

For his part, State Minister with responsibility for the Disaster Reconstruction Authority, Myles Laroda, who led the debate on the bill, recommended the legislation as a step in the right direction.

“What this bill is seeking to do is necessary,” he added, “and.. the reality is that this bill has far reaching significance and consequences.”

 Hurricane Dorian struck The Bahamas on September 1, 2019 as a Category Five storm, killing at least 70 people in Abaco and Grand Bahama.

 Some 35 people have been reported as missing since Dorian’s passage, according to the Coroner Court’s list.