Community Affairs Minister Dale Butler has pledged to correct a number of "serious flaws" in the Human Rights Act which were red flagged recently by a Supreme Court judge.

In a stinging judgment delivered last week in the case of a female addictions councillor claiming she was sexually discriminated against when fired by the Salvation Army in 1998, Justice Ian Kawaley pointed to numerous impediments written into the Act which were causing delays of up to five years in having human rights complaints dealt with by Ministry-appointed boards of inquiry.

The Human Rights Commission is the organisation initially charged with hearing a complaint and making a ruling ? although if that ruling is not acceptable to both sides in any dispute, a board of inquiry must then be appointed by the Minister of Community Affairs to investigate the matter further.

However, problems with funding and staffing the boards of inquiry often mean the two disputing parties have to wait for months or even years to have their issue resolved ? a delay they can do nothing about under the current legislation.

Mr. Justice Kawaley highlighted a number of "significant infrastructural weaknesses with the Human Rights Act including:

lThe need to establish a fresh board of enquiry to hear every single complaint. A permanent tribunal with a flexible membership would be the more "manageable" option, said Mr. Justice Kawaley.

lThe power of the Minister himself to appoint boards of inquiry. Such a scenario could give rise to potential political interference in a process which should be completely independent, argued the judge.

lThe lack of available options to the disputing parties if faced with a long delay. Both should have legal avenues available to them which would force the board of inquiry to proceed "in a timely manner", he concluded.

But speaking to yesterday, Mr. Butler said he had become aware of the severe backlog in human rights complaints referred to boards of inquiry soon after he assumed his post two years ago.

He assured all those concerned that he is taking the judge's recommendations "extremely seriously" and said his Ministry would eventually produce a package of amendments to the Act which would "resolve the problem".

"We are going through the judgement very meticulously," he said. "As a matter of fact, we were already aware of a number of problems with the process and we were in the process of putting together a paper to be submitted to Cabinet in the near future.

"We have been researching and working on this paper for quite some time. In the interim because we were concerned about this backlog, we had moved a number of cases to mediation and we had had quite a bit of success with that."

Mr. Butler said that as soon as he became Minister he was informed that it was normal to hear only one case at a time.

He said he realised this was not sufficient ? "so we had managed to get two or three cases going at the same time," he said.

"A lot of that depends on the availability of board members. In a country as small as Bermuda, the list of board members is by nature limited and the challenge has been getting boards of inquiry to sit when many members are unavailable because of work commitments or are abroad ? and the same is true with potential witnesses.

"But it has been two years since we started working on the amendments and rather than do it piecemeal we wanted to do it as a package of reforms ? it has certainly taken a little longer than we expected."

Mr. Butler concluded by agreeing that the Minister should not have the power to appoint boards of inquiry and said that this potential conflict would be addressed by the legislative amendments.