THE Office of the Solicitor-General, over the years, has been working “flat out” on thousands of claims against the State and as a result the office has been forced to engage private lawyers at a huge cost to the State, acting Solicitor-General David Lambu said yesterday.
Mr Lambu said this after inquiry chairman judge (retired) Maurice Sheehan asked him to explain the process and the period of time it took for his officers to get instructions from statutory bodies and employees against whom the claims were made.
He said they were short of staff. At present there are 11 officers, including himself, dealing with almost 1,000 claims every week.
He also highlighted that in recent years, there was an increase in the engagement of private law firms but the ‘brief outs’ were not communicated to the Solicitor-General’s office.
He said in recent cases, there had been ‘blanket brief outs’.
“We can only pay outside law firms if they have been formally briefed out.
“Some defend the State and later come and say they have represented the State but do not provide copies of their brief outs,” he said.
Mr Lambu said currently, they had about 9,000 claims to deal with, adding it would help if the Government allowed for more lawyers to be employed at the Office of the Solicitor-General.
“It is not that the lawyers are incompetent. We have a lot of files to work on. It is just too much work.
“If a lawyer has less number of files he/she will deal with them,” he said.

 

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