Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

deek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The State is set to pay mil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion to sev­en teach­ers who were by­passed for pro­mo­tion de­spite hav­ing the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered late last week, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams up­held the land­mark class ac­tion law­suit pur­sued by the teach­ers through a le­gal team from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan.

When the case was filed in 2023, it was agreed that the law­suit of one of the teach­ers, Nir­mala Ses­narayan, would be used as a test case that would de­ter­mine the fate of the oth­ers.

In up­hold­ing her case against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for breach­es of her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams or­dered $800,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for Ses­narayan, who had re­signed as a teacher and mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States be­fore the case was de­ter­mined.

The com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to her col­leagues will be as­sessed on a case-by-case ba­sis by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the out­come of the case might have larg­er im­pli­ca­tions, as scores of teach­ers, who were sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced, have al­ready sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion based on it.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, Ses­narayan, who is al­so a pop­u­lar lo­cal In­di­an clas­si­cal singer, joined the teach­ing ser­vice in Au­gust 2004.

In Sep­tem­ber 2005, she be­gan a Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion.

She claimed that a year af­ter com­menc­ing the course at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s then-Di­rec­tor of Hu­man Re­sources, Glen­ford Joseph and the then-pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Clyde Per­me­ll, vis­it­ed the ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion and ad­vised her and her fel­low stu­dents that they should switch to a four-year teach­ing de­gree.

She claimed that they were as­sured that once they com­plet­ed the de­gree, they would be en­ti­tled to be re­assessed to the po­si­tion of Teacher III.

In Sep­tem­ber 2010, Ses­narayan re-en­tered the teach­ing ser­vice as an As­sis­tant Teacher (Pri­ma­ry). Sev­er­al months lat­er, she grad­u­at­ed from UTT and ap­plied to be re­assessed based on the pre­vi­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

In 2011, she was in­formed that she was as­sessed as a Teacher II (Sec­ondary)-Eng­lish.

She sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion based on the rank but re­ceived no re­sponse.

In April 2015, she was in­formed that she was ap­point­ed Teacher III and as­signed to the St Joseph Sec­ondary School.

How­ev­er, she was sub­se­quent­ly in­formed that the rank in­di­cat­ed was an er­ror.

In 2016, she re­ceived her of­fi­cial ap­point­ment as Teacher I (Sec­ondary) with ef­fect from Sep­tem­ber 2010 and was ap­point­ed to act as a Teacher II.

How­ev­er, she claimed that she on­ly be­gan to re­ceive her salary as a Teacher I in Feb­ru­ary 2017.

Two years lat­er, Ses­narayan ap­plied for re­assess­ment once again.

She was then in­formed that her as­sess­ment as Teacher II re­mained, as the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the high­er rank were amend­ed, and she no longer qual­i­fied.

In her law­suit, Ses­narayan’s lawyers re­ferred to sev­er­al col­leagues with sim­i­lar qual­i­fi­ca­tions who were pro­mot­ed to Teacher III while she was await­ing re­assess­ment be­fore the min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions changed.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams ruled that Ses­narayan had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that she would have been re­assessed based on the rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by Joseph and Per­me­ll.

“Mr Joseph made clear and un­am­bigu­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the stu­dent body pur­su­ing the teach­ing diplo­ma, per­suad­ing them to switch to the teach­ing de­gree,” she said.

She point­ed out that while the min­istry claimed that it had no records of the rep­re­sen­ta­tions, it nev­er de­nied that such were made and failed to call the duo as wit­ness­es to ad­dress the is­sue.

She al­so found that Ses­narayan lost out on the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be pro­mot­ed based on the min­istry’s de­lay in re­assess­ing her.

She al­so found that Ses­narayan was de­nied the pro­tec­tion of the law by the min­istry’s ar­bi­trary ap­pli­ca­tion of the cri­te­ria for as­sess­ment.

In de­ter­min­ing the com­pen­sa­tion for Ses­narayan, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams or­dered $294,961 in com­pen­sa­tion for loss of earn­ings. It was as­sessed based on the dif­fer­ence in salary she would have re­ceived if she had been re­clas­si­fied when she first ap­plied in 2014.

How­ev­er, she de­nied Ses­narayan’s claim for loss of fu­ture earn­ings, as she not­ed that she is no longer a teacher.

“Per­haps if the claimant were still em­ployed with the Teach­ing Ser­vice in this ju­ris­dic­tion, the court’s find­ing may have been dif­fer­ent,” she said.

She al­so or­dered $200,000 for the dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience suf­fered and $300,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to vin­di­cate her rights and de­ter fu­ture breach­es.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay her le­gal costs for the case.