Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) chair­man Kern Dass and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Vive­ka Par­gass have threat­ened to sue Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer for defama­tion.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter is­sued yes­ter­day, the duo’s lawyers, Kent Sam­lal and Saman­tha Singh-Poona, claimed that Ogeer made defam­a­to­ry state­ments about them while ad­dress­ing a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day.

Singh-Poona claimed that Ogeer’s re­marks were not con­fined to TSTT’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pos­ture, the treat­ment of em­ploy­ees, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing or oth­er is­sues with­in the union’s re­mit.

“Rather, you made re­peat­ed al­le­ga­tions and in­sin­u­a­tions con­cern­ing the hon­esty, in­tegri­ty, pro­fes­sion­al con­duct and pro­bity of our clients, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, con­flicts of in­ter­est, im­prop­er po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence, abuse of of­fice, in­ter­fer­ence in re­cruit­ment and pro­cure­ment, fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and com­plic­i­ty in wrong­do­ing,” Singh-Poona said.

While she said her clients were not seek­ing to in­su­late them­selves from le­git­i­mate scruti­ny based on their roles at the ma­jor­i­ty State-owned com­pa­ny, she not­ed that they were con­cerned that Ogeer had made un­found­ed state­ments with­out re­fer­ring to ev­i­dence.

She gave Ogeer 48 hours to pro­vide a fac­tu­al and ev­i­den­tial ba­sis for her al­le­ga­tions.

Ogeer was al­so giv­en the op­tion to with­draw her al­le­ga­tions or cor­rect those that could not be prop­er­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

“Our clients re­serve the right to take such steps as may be­come nec­es­sary to vin­di­cate their rep­u­ta­tions, pro­tect their em­ploy­ment and pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ests and pre­serve their le­gal rights, in­clud­ing pro­ceed­ings for in­junc­tive and oth­er re­lief, with­out fur­ther no­tice to you,” Singh-Poona said.

Singh-Poona not­ed that Ogeer had called on Dass to leave the com­pa­ny or for his ap­point­ment to be re­voked.

“It is a se­ri­ous mat­ter to in­vite an ap­point­ing au­thor­i­ty, em­ploy­er, or oth­er per­son up­on whom an in­di­vid­ual’s pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ests de­pend to act ad­verse­ly against him on the strength of al­le­ga­tions which have nei­ther been prop­er­ly par­tic­u­larised nor sub­stan­ti­at­ed,” she said.

Ad­dress­ing an al­le­ga­tion in­volv­ing Par­gass and the re­cruit­ment of a new em­ploy­ee, Singh-Poona said the mat­ter had been con­sid­ered by the com­pa­ny’s board and Par­gass had been cleared of any wrong­do­ing.

She al­so said Ogeer’s claims re­gard­ing Par­gass’ re­cruit­ment were un­found­ed, as Par­gass was hired fol­low­ing a process con­duct­ed by an ex­ter­nal hu­man re­sources firm.

“Our client has noth­ing to con­ceal. What she ob­jects to is a se­lec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of ma­te­r­i­al cal­cu­lat­ed to cre­ate an in­fer­ence which the com­plete record does not sup­port,” she said.

Singh-Poona al­so crit­i­cised Ogeer for cast­ing doubt on an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and fraud.

“Pub­licly sug­gest­ing, with­out ev­i­dence, that such com­plaints may have been man­u­fac­tured be­cause ques­tions were raised con­cern­ing an­oth­er of­fi­cer of the com­pa­ny risks un­der­min­ing the in­tegri­ty of that process and dis­cour­ag­ing per­sons from re­port­ing con­duct which ought prop­er­ly to be brought to the at­ten­tion of the com­pa­ny,” she said.

Singh-Poona ad­vised Ogeer to pre­serve all doc­u­ments, cor­re­spon­dence and record­ings on which she in­tend­ed to re­ly in sup­port of her al­le­ga­tions.

She re­served her clients’ rights to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion if they were not sat­is­fied with Ogeer’s re­sponse to the le­gal threat.