A High Court judge has or­dered the Po­lice Pro­mo­tion Ad­vi­so­ry Board to con­sid­er pro­mot­ing a po­lice con­sta­ble af­ter rul­ing that he was treat­ed un­fair­ly.

Ram­dath Phillip, a qual­i­fied at­tor­ney and po­lice pros­e­cu­tor at­tached to the South­ern Di­vi­sion, was suc­cess­ful in his ju­di­cial re­view law­suit chal­leng­ing the Board’s de­ci­sion to de­ny him the max­i­mum 35 points giv­en to of­fi­cers who pos­sess a law de­gree.

De­liv­er­ing judge­ment in Phillip’s favour in the San Fer­nan­do Supreme Court on Fri­day, Jus­tice Ricky Rahim al­so or­dered the State to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by the of­fi­cer in fil­ing the ac­tion.

Phillip, of Princes Town, joined the Po­lice Ser­vice in Feb­ru­ary 2003, com­plet­ed his Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in law with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don in 2007.

In Oc­to­ber 2010, Phillip was called to the Bar and pro­mot­ed as a le­gal of­fi­cer in the South­ern Di­vi­sion. Phillip’s at­tor­neys ar­gued that he should have been ex­empt­ed from writ­ing any qual­i­fy­ing ex­am­i­na­tions for pro­mo­tion with­in the sec­ond di­vi­sion all the way up to the rank of a po­lice in­spec­tor.

They sub­mit­ted that that pol­i­cy was put in­to ef­fect by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in a De­part­men­tal Or­der in 2007 which ad­vised that po­lice of­fi­cers who grad­u­at­ed with the LLB de­gree from an in­sti­tu­tion recog­nised by the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go would be ex­empt­ed from hav­ing to write any fur­ther pro­mo­tion ex­am­i­na­tion and be award­ed the max­i­mum 35 points in the cat­e­go­ry of ex­am­i­na­tion.

How­ev­er, Phillip was ad­vised via let­ter in May 2014 that he would not be grant­ed the ex­emp­tion be­cause he had not ap­plied be­fore the Ju­ly 29, 2010 dead­line.

Phillip com­plained to the Com­mis­sion­er that he was not aware of this dead­line and was be­ing treat­ed un­fair­ly. He con­tend­ed that there were no pro­mo­tion in­ter­views for a very long time and there­fore saw no rea­son to rush his ex­emp­tion ap­pli­ca­tion which was in any event, a sim­ple for­mal­i­ty as he had ob­tained his LLB de­gree from a recog­nised uni­ver­si­ty.

De­spite this, Phillip sat and passed the rel­e­vant pro­mo­tion ex­am­i­na­tion. Phillip wrote sev­er­al let­ters com­plain­ing about the un­fair treat­ment and met with sev­er­al se­nior peo­ple at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion with­out any res­o­lu­tion to his prob­lem.

In De­cem­ber 2017, Phillip, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan SC lead­ing Chelsea Stew­art in­struct­ed by Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, filed for ju­di­cial re­view against the Board’s de­ci­sion.

The judge man­dat­ed the Board to im­me­di­ate­ly award Phillip the max­i­mum 35 points and con­sid­er him for pro­mo­tion.

Jus­tice Rahim al­so grant­ed a de­c­la­ra­tion that the de­ci­sion not to ex­empt Phillip from hav­ing to write a pro­mo­tion ex­am­i­na­tion was un­fair, ir­ra­tional and done in breach of the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

The State was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Roshan Ram­char­i­tar in­struct­ed by Lau­ra Per­sad.