Derek Achong

High Court Judge Vasheist Kokaram will this af­ter­noon de­cide whether me­dia house WIN Caribbean Lim­it­ed can con­tin­ue to op­er­ate its ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions while it chal­lenges the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T's (TATT) de­ci­sion not to re­new its broad­cast li­cence.

Dur­ing an emer­gency hear­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day evening, Kokaram heard sub­mis­sions on whether he should grant the com­pa­ny leave for ju­di­cial re­view of the au­thor­i­ty's de­ci­sion and an in­junc­tion putting its dead­line on hold.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the com­pa­ny's own­er, Shantel Jaikaran, Se­nior Coun­sel Sophia Chote stat­ed that TATT in­formed her client ear­li­er this month that its non-trans­fer­able li­cence was not be­ing re­newed be­cause it was in the name of her fa­ther, Mo­han, who died in April last year and as he (Mo­han) was ow­ing it al­most $5 mil­lion in un­paid fees.

Chote claimed her client was in on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the au­thor­i­ty to clear the debt and was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions be­fore it made the de­ci­sion.

She con­tend­ed that her client on­ly learned of the debt af­ter her fa­ther's death and need­ed time to sell some of its as­sets and could not meet next Mon­day's dead­line set by au­thor­i­ty.

Chote al­so stat­ed if her client was forced to reap­ply for a li­cence in her com­pa­ny's name it would have to shut down its op­er­a­tions for the three-month pe­ri­od es­ti­mat­ed for the grant­i­ng of a new li­cence.

"We have dozens of em­ploy­ees that would be put on the bread­line if we are no longer able to broad­cast," Chote said as she claimed it was not mere­ly a case of "bad debt."

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted the de­ceased own­er was ob­lig­at­ed to rec­ti­fy his fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion while alive.

"You al­low us to op­er­ate for ten years and then in the blink of an eye you say that the li­cence dies with your fa­ther," she added.

In re­sponse lead coun­sel for TATT, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, claimed Jaikaran's fa­ther or the com­pa­ny should have been vig­i­lant in en­sur­ing it was in good stand­ing with the au­thor­i­ty.

"It is a valu­able as­set so you have to be dili­gent in re­new­al," Peake said.

Shantel and her moth­er, In­dra, made a pub­lic an­nounce­ment on the com­pa­ny's tele­vi­sion sta­tion, WIN TV, claim­ing it was be­ing "hound­ed out of busi­ness."

In the state­ment aired on Wednes­day night, Shantel Jaikaran gave no rea­son for the com­pa­ny's trou­ble but said there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing their li­cence from the TATT and that there were peo­ple who did not want the com­pa­ny to sur­vive.

The two held hands as they ap­pealed to the pub­lic to sup­port them as they fight to save the com­pa­ny, WIN Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Lim­it­ed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TATT, Chris Seecha­ran, de­nied that the au­thor­i­ty had sought to "hound" WIN Caribbean Lim­it­ed, WIN TV, out of busi­ness.

Seecha­ran said WIN TV and Gayelle were yet to meet the oblig­a­tions to have their con­ces­sions to op­er­ate re­newed by the TATT but the au­thor­i­ty is giv­ing both un­til the end of the month to get their hous­es in or­der.

TATT had giv­en free to air tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ers a dead­line of Feb­ru­ary 16 to ful­fil their li­cence oblig­a­tions to have their spec­trum con­ces­sions re­newed but up to that time Seecha­ran said on­ly Gayelle and WIN TV failed to meet the dead­line.

In an ad­ver­tise­ment in the me­dia ear­li­er this year TATT no­ti­fied "all con­ces­sion­aires of free to air ra­dio and tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing ser­vices, whose con­ces­sions are due to ex­pire on or be­fore the end of Feb­ru­ary 2016, that they are re­quired to set­tle all out­stand­ing ar­rears due to the au­thor­i­ty on or be­fore Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 16, 2016."