Derek Achong

A se­nior man­ag­er with the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (Os­ha), who ruled that health and safe­ty is­sues at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion's Port-of-Spain of­fice were not haz­ardous to staff, has ad­mit­ted to with­hold­ing ev­i­dence vi­tal to his as­sess­ment.The au­thor­i­ty's Chief In­spec­tor Gaek­wad Ra­moutar made the ad­mis­sion yes­ter­day.

He was giv­ing ev­i­dence in the In­dus­tri­al Court in the con­tempt mo­tion against Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke for al­leged­ly breach­ing an in­junc­tion, grant­ed on Ju­ly 3, pre­vent­ing staff at the build­ing from en­gag­ing in in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.The is­sue arose while Duke's lead at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes, SC, was ques­tion­ing Ra­moutar's de­ci­sion to over­turn his or­gan­i­sa­tion's in­spec­tion re­port on the build­ing, which found the de­part­ment was non-com­pli­ant with 22 re­quire­ments un­der health and safe­ty leg­is­la­tion.

As he sought to dis­cred­it Ra­moutar's as­sess­ment, Mendes asked why he failed to tell the court that short­ly af­ter the re­port was pre­pared, a day af­ter the in­junc­tion was grant­ed, his de­part­ment's in­spec­tor Dr Ros­alie Hold­er ad­vised him that ac­tion should be tak­en against the de­part­ment for its non-com­pli­ance."I have no par­tic­u­lar rea­son for do­ing so," Ra­moutar said.Mendes de­scribed Ra­moutar's omis­sion as ex­tra­or­di­nary and dis­turb­ing.

"He is not at­tempt­ing to as­sist in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, he is at­tempt­ing to thwart it," Mendes told In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix and her four col­leagues pre­sid­ing over the case.Al­though Ra­moutar ac­knowl­edged that the de­part­ment's han­dling of sev­er­al health and safe­ty is­sues was not ac­cept­able, he said from his over­all analy­sis, he did not think the ac­tion sug­gest­ed by Hold­er was nec­es­sary.

He al­so said her fail­ure to con­sult with him on the is­sue with­in a day of the in­spec­tion led him to as­sume there was no im­mi­nent dan­ger to staff which would war­rant shut­ting down the build­ing. Mendes tried to press the is­sue fur­ther by re­fer­ring to an e-mail ex­change be­tween Ra­moutar and Hold­er, but had to re­serve that as­pect of his cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, as copies of the e-mails were not avail­able.Ra­moutar's cross-ex­am­i­na­tion re­sumes on Mon­day.