Minister of Finance Saisnarine Kowlessar has conceded that the Customs Order brought before the National Assembly on Thursday had expired and says that he would soon take steps to address the situation. The opposition PNCR had deemed the order illegal and its MPs walked out of Parliament.

In a press release yesterday, the Minister stated that the Customs Duties (Amendment) (No.2) order was advertised in the Official Gazette of September 1, 2003 and transmitted to the Clerk of the National Assembly on September 5, 2003, along with the Motion in compliance with Section 9 of the Customs Act.

During the debate, PNCR member Winston Murray stated that the order and the motion were not transmitted to the Clerk within ten days after publication in the Gazette as required by law.

Kowlessar said he knew he had signed the note to the Clerk on September 5 with the expectation that the Clerk would have received it on the same date. So during the debate he did not accept Murray’s assertions.

“It was only after the conclusion of the debate in the National Assembly that I learnt that the order and motion I sent to the Clerk on [September 5, 2003] was apparently delayed in transmission and not received by him until (October 10, 2003),” Kowlessar said in the statement.

At Thursday’s sitting - the first after a two-month recess - Murray had requested an adjournment to verify whether the legal procedure was complied with. After a prolonged adjournment the document subsequently shown was a slip from the Ministry of Finance which, according to the PNCR, purported to show that the Clerk of the National Assembly had received the Motion and a copy of the Order on October 10, 2003, in excess of one month after the publication in the Official Gazette of September 1, 2003.

When asked by the PNCR to overrule the order, Speaker of the National Assembly, Ralph Ramkarran, said that he was in no position to challenge the order on the issue of illegality, and that this would have to be done through the courts. The PNCR had subsequently threatened legal action over the issue.