Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
A former prison officer has won his lawsuit against the Public Service Commission (PSC) over being denied retroactive promotion after he retired.
Delivering a judgment on Wednesday, High Court Judge Robin Mohammed upheld a lawsuit from Rajkumar Ramroop over the PSC’s handling of his promotion.
Justice Mohammed ruled that the commission’s decision not to promote Ramroop was in breach of natural justice and procedural fairness. He also found that Ramroop’s right to equality of treatment from a public authority, under Section 4(d) of the Constitution, was breached.
Justice Mohammed ordered $50,000 in compensation for the breaches and directed the commission to reconsider Ramroop’s eligibility for retroactive promotion to the rank of Prisons Supervisor.
In the event that the commission eventually decides to grant Ramroop the promotion, it would mean that he would receive increased retirement benefits.
Ramroop joined the T&T Prisons Service in 1993.
By 2008, Ramroop had attained the rank of Prison Officer II and was assessed for promotion to the next rank of prisons supervisor.
An order of merit list was compiled in 2014, and Ramroop placed 86th.
Before the list was due to expire in early 2016, the then-prisons commissioner wrote to the commission for it to assess officers on the list for promotion.
The exercise was commenced but was delayed as some affected officers pursued litigation over it.
Ramroop, who served as president of the Prison Officers’ Association, retired after attaining the mandatory retirement age in 2019.
A month after Ramroop’s retirement, the PSC extended the merit list to retroactively promote four officers, who retired before Ramroop and were placed above him on the list.
The PSC then conducted a further assessment, and Ramroop was placed third on a preliminary marks list.
However, it ruled that it did not have the jurisdiction to promote Ramroop retroactively, as he was no longer under its purview after retiring.
In deciding the lawsuit, Justice Mohammed ruled that the commission acted unfairly in failing to seek Ramroop’s views before rendering its decision.
“If the commission believed that the claimant’s retirement posed a jurisdictional obstacle, the commission should have informed the claimant of this concern and given him an opportunity to make representations on the point before making its decision,” he said.
He also found that Ramroop was treated differently from his colleagues, who received their promotions after retirement.
Stating that the commission offered no justification for the differential treatment, Justice Mohammed said: “The defendant does not suggest that the claimant was less qualified than his comparators, or that he had a poor service record, or that there were disciplinary concerns.”
Despite his findings, Justice Mohammed ruled that Ramroop did not have a legitimate expectation that he would be automatically promoted, as he could not demonstrate that he received a clear and unambiguous promise from the commission.
While he found that the commission’s process was fundamentally flawed, Justice Mohammed noted that he could not compel the commission to promote Ramroop.
Instead, he ordered it to reconsider the issue based on the findings of the case.
In ordering the compensation, Justice Mohammed said: “This award reflects both the loss of the opportunity to be fairly considered for promotion and the need to mark the seriousness of the constitutional violations that occurred.”
Ramroop was represented by Navindra Ramnanan and Ricky Pandohee.
The commission and the Office of the Attorney General were represented by Karlene Seenath, Nicol Yee Fung, Victoria Armorer, and Amrita Ramsook.
