DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A sec­ondary school teacher has filed a law­suit against the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) af­ter be­ing by­passed for pro­mo­tion.

Lee­van Adesh Seep­er­sad filed a ju­di­cial re­view and con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion late last month. The case came up for hear­ing yes­ter­day be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad (no re­la­tion).

Al­though Seep­er­sad filed out­side the statu­to­ry time lim­it, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that he had raised valid con­cerns over the han­dling of his pro­mo­tion which war­rant­ed ju­di­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

“The claims be­ing ad­vanced, notwith­stand­ing the de­lay, do not seem to be claims that are de­void of mer­it,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

He ruled that the mat­ter would pro­ceed by way of a “rolled-up” hear­ing, in which he will si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­sid­er whether the teacher should be grant­ed leave to pur­sue the case de­spite the de­lay and de­cide the sub­stan­tive le­gal is­sues raised.

“The mat­ter rais­es im­por­tant is­sues as to the process be­ing en­gaged with­in the teach­ing ser­vice,” he added.

Dead­lines were set for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and the case was ad­journed to De­cem­ber 4.

Ac­cord­ing to court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Seep­er­sad was ap­point­ed a Math­e­mat­ics Teacher II in Oc­to­ber 2013. He was first as­signed to the Princes Town West Sec­ondary School, be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School and, last year, to the Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School.

In 2015, Seep­er­sad re­quest­ed the cri­te­ria for pro­mo­tion to Math­e­mat­ics Teacher III. De­spite hold­ing a BSc in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing, he was told he need­ed to com­plete four un­der­grad­u­ate Math­e­mat­ics cours­es to qual­i­fy. Af­ter ini­tial­ly strug­gling to find cours­es of­fered out­side work hours, he com­plet­ed the four mod­ules be­tween 2019 and 2022 and sub­mit­ted his tran­scripts and cer­tifi­cates — but re­ceived no re­sponse.

In No­vem­ber 2022, a min­istry of­fi­cial in­formed him he still did not pos­sess the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions. He lat­er learned that some of his cer­tifi­cates had not been for­ward­ed when his ap­pli­ca­tion was as­sessed. In May 2023, the min­istry ad­vised that some of the cours­es he com­plet­ed at the Col­lege of Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (Costaatt) were not recog­nised and that the CPO would al­so need to re­con­sid­er his en­gi­neer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

In his law­suit, Seep­er­sad’s at­tor­ney, Mo­hanie Ma­haraj-Mo­han, ar­gued that the CPO’s in­ter­ven­tion was un­nec­es­sary for the min­istry to rec­om­mend his pro­mo­tion to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

“The CPO’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties re­lat­ed to the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of of­fices do not ex­tend to as­sess­ing and de­cid­ing whether the com­ple­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes will ren­der in­di­vid­u­als el­i­gi­ble for the post,” Ma­haraj-Mo­han said.

She claimed sev­er­al of Seep­er­sad’s col­leagues were pro­mot­ed de­spite hav­ing the same or few­er qual­i­fi­ca­tions and crit­i­cised the long de­lay in re­solv­ing the mat­ter.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight years have passed since the claimant’s first re­quest to be con­sid­ered as a Teacher III (Sec­ondary) based on his de­gree in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing ob­tained in 2009 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and there is no jus­ti­fi­able rea­son for the un­rea­son­able de­lay,” she said.

Ma­haraj-Mo­han al­so ex­plained her client’s late fil­ing of the law­suit, not­ing that he had tried to re­solve the is­sue with­out lit­i­ga­tion.

“The claimant has ex­haust­ed all av­enues in try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate via cor­re­spon­dence and tele­phone with mem­bers of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on his is­sue to no avail be­fore ini­ti­at­ing le­gal pro­ceed­ings,” she said.

Through the law­suit, Seep­er­sad is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over his failed pro­mo­tion, in­clud­ing one that his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment by a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty was breached. He is al­so ask­ing the court to or­der the min­istry and CPO to ac­cept his qual­i­fi­ca­tions and re­con­sid­er his pro­mo­tion re­quest.