AG Chambers staff has increased by 16 in 3 short years
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While appearing before the SFC last year, the Attorney General (AG) of the Virgin Islands, Hon Dawn J. Smith, was able to report on her substantial staff increase.
Responding to a question from the Minister for Health and Social Development and Member for the Ninth District, Hon Vincent O. Wheatley, in which the AG had mentioned being severely short-staffed when she took office in 2020, the AG informed the Committee of the number of staff members the Chambers currently has.
Big staff increase
The AG responded that when she “took office in 2020, the staff complement of the office was 21 out of 42 positions.” Currently, the number of staff in the office has increased over the last three years, from 21 to 37 with new positions also being added.
This means that in three years, 16 additional staff have been added to the Chambers. It remains unclear how many are Attorneys or how many are administrative staff, as the SFC report, now a public document, has not made that clear.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Health and Social Development and Member for the Ninth District asked the AG if the public was allowed to speak to her directly on matters that pertained to someone in the public.
The AG explained that if someone outside of the Government attempted to engage her “about a matter with the Government, her response would depend on the nature of my instructions as I am instructed by the Government of the Virgin Islands and had to be mindful of the lawyer-client relationship in that regard.”
Has there been improvements with new staff?
Additionally, in another question, the AG noted that the Law Reform Commission was not operational or funded. “Instead, the current focus was on law revision – to consolidate all the laws of the Virgin Islands and publish them online for free access by the public as a first step and then to conduct a comprehensive law revision exercise.”
With the increase in staff at the Chambers, there are no statistics to show whether or not input and support to government departments and ministries have also increased and whether response times from the AG Chambers have improved.
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