Basseterre, St. Kitts, February 08, 2023 (SKNIS): Persons desirous of accessing future Official Gazettes of the Federation of St Christopher and Nevis online will soon be able to do so by visiting gazette.gov.kn following the passage of the Official Gazette Bill, 2023, in the Federal Parliament on February 8, 2023.
“[T]he purpose of this Bill is to create certainty as to when laws and statutory instruments are published and to provide for the digitization and publication of the official Gazette of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is a modernization Bill” said mover of the Bill, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, the Honourable Garth Wilkin.
Attorney-General Wilkin said it was extremely important to add this piece of legislation to the government’s good governance agenda.
“It fits part of that agenda, which is accountability and transparency. If you have laws, if you have proclamations, if you have judgments, if you have decisions of the government that must be published in the Gazette, accountability and transparency is allowing all of the people access to those laws, those decisions, those lists, etc,” said Attorney General Wilkin.
The Attorney-General explained why it was necessary to modernize the Official Gazette of St. Christopher and Nevis.
“The World Bank in its 2017 report said approximately 81% of the population of St. Kitts and Nevis have access to the internet. Madame Speaker, we are in 2023, we are an online people. Even the most senior member of us has full access to the internet,” he said. “The young gentleman who represents the good people of number 6, who just turned 70 years old, is a frequent user of the internet, and that shows you that it is not limited just to young people…we are coming into the modern age with this bill, Madame Speaker,” Attorney General Wilkin added.
He said that the Federation will join other countries such as Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Seychelles as they too have “sought to modernize their Gazette legislation, by making their Official Gazette be the publication of material on the internet, where most of the population have free access.”
Attorney-General Wilkin stressed that the “objective in providing the online publication of the Gazette is to better facilitate proper dissemination and greater access to the Official Gazette.”
