ATTORNEY GENERAL and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, S.C, has underscored the crucial role of law-making in Guyana’s development push, noting that the government’s aggressive legislative agenda is directly linked to national growth objectives.

Nandlall made this known while speaking on the ‘Starting Point’ podcast on Sunday, during which he also noted that most policy initiatives cannot be implemented without a proper legal structure to support them.

“The reality is that you hardly can find a major policy imperative that can be implemented and successfully executed without a regulatory framework, and that regulatory framework is invariably a legislation that will govern the particular concept,” he stated.

The AG using examples from several sectors, illustrated how legislative reform has been integral to enabling new systems, technologies and investments across the country.

In the health sector, he explained that efforts to modernise medical care, including initiatives such as tissue transplants and telemedicine,  required new laws to ensure proper governance and protection of sensitive personal data.

“We wanted to modernise our medical-care programme and to embrace and envelop it in modern medical procedures,” Nandlall said.

“But those who wanted to promulgate that concept quickly realised that you can’t do it without legislation. So, we had to pass a suite of legislation, like the tissue transplant legislation… We had to enact data-protection legislation, because you need to take people’s personal data, their medical history; once you take that, you have to find a mechanism to store it and to protect it and to guard its confidentiality.”

To this end, he highlighted that a similar approach was taken in the housing sector, where the government introduced modern models of home ownership such as condominiums.

“When we looked at the laws in Guyana, it did not permit the establishment of condominiums because our land-titling system gives you a title or a transport… for a plot of land with that building that is on the land,” the AG noted. “But condominiums allow each unit in that building to be owned separately… so we had to enact a Condominium Act.”

As another example, he pointed to the Single Window Planning and Development Act, which provided the legal framework for the ease of doing business and acquiring permits, which was previously a bureaucratic process riddled with red tape.

He explained that the new law allows applicants to submit all necessary documents through a single-entry point, which then circulates them to relevant agencies for approval.

Nandlall also referenced emerging areas such as electronic contracting and digital signatures, which are being legislated to keep pace with global trends. “We want to use electronic signatures. We want to move from manual paper contracts to electronic contracts to e-contracts… The world has gone in that direction. How do you do that? You have to pass legislation to that effect,” he said.

Further to this, speaking on the government’s approach, Nandlall described legislation as the ‘cradle’ in which every major policy initiative must be nurtured.

It was then that he noted, “That is why we have such an aggressive legislative agenda, because we have an aggressive developmental agenda.”