Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

Ac­cord­ing to Derek Achong in the Guardian on Sep­tem­ber 16th, in­stant, in re­spect of the case of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (Re­spon­dent) v Fa­vian­na Ga­jad­har (Ap­pel­lant) [2026] UKPC 35, the fol­low­ing is re­port­ed:

“In an un­usu­al and un­prece­dent­ed move on Mon­day, five Law Lords de­liv­ered their judg­ment up­hold­ing Ga­jad­har’s ap­peal im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the UK Supreme Court build­ing in Lon­don, Eng­land. Lord George Leg­gatt, who de­liv­ered the Board’s rul­ing, was es­pe­cial­ly crit­i­cal of the com­mis­sion’s con­duct in its pro­tract­ed lit­i­ga­tion against Ga­jad­har, which re­sult­ed in her be­ing award­ed more than $3.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion. Lord Leg­gatt said: ‘The his­to­ry of this case is a sor­ry one, which re­gret­tably does no cred­it to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion of T&T’.”

What was al­so even more un­usu­al is that the Privy Coun­cil Board de­ter­mined that there was no need to hear Ga­jad­har’s at­tor­ney, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC. Ga­jad­har had to wait for jus­tice in this mat­ter that dat­ed back to June 21st, 2007.

For decades, a long list of pub­lic of­fi­cers have been hor­ri­bly treat­ed by the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions in this coun­try. They have had to fight those Ser­vice Com­mis­sions to pro­tect their ca­reers from a State that has not been sym­pa­thet­ic to their ser­vice and has sought to chal­lenge their quest for jus­tice to the bit­ter end. Anand Ram­lo­gan has fought many of these cas­es be­fore he was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (2010-2015) and af­ter­wards.

Some of these cas­es pro­vide a glos­sary of mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion in re­spect of how the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions have treat­ed pub­lic of­fi­cers.

For ex­am­ple, in the case of Doug­nath Ra­jku­mar v Lal­la and Oth­ers [2001] UKPC 53, judg­ment de­liv­ered on No­vem­ber 29th, 2001, it emerged that no staff re­ports in the Prison Ser­vice were be­ing pre­pared for Mr Ra­jku­mar, while oth­er per­sons who had been pro­mot­ed had staff re­ports pre­pared for them. This was a painful case of mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion that af­fect­ed Ra­jku­mar’s ca­reer.

In the case of Khim­raj Bisses­sar v At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go (H.C.A. No. S-490/1998), the ev­i­dence filed by the PSC showed that every time he went for the pro­mo­tion­al in­ter­view, he would be con­sis­tent­ly ranked one (1) po­si­tion be­low where the PSC chose to draw the cut-off mark and es­tab­lish the mer­it list. This hap­pened on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, and he al­leged that they were de­ter­mined to keep him out of the hi­er­ar­chy of the Prison Ser­vice.

Madam Jus­tice Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee ruled as fol­lows:

“50. The Court holds that there has been a con­tra­ven­tion of the law by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in that there has been a breach of reg­u­la­tions 34, 36(1), 168(3) and 172. In my judg­ment, this con­sti­tutes a de­lib­er­ate and in­ten­tion­al ex­er­cise of the pow­ers of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion not in ac­cor­dance with the law, which has re­sult­ed in the ero­sion of the ap­pli­cant’s rights, the en­ti­tle­ment to which have be­come vest­ed in him from the Con­sti­tu­tion and the reg­u­la­tions made there­un­der.” (p. 40)(Ju­ly 16th, 2004).

This judg­ment was not ap­pealed. Sim­i­lar­ly, in the case of Alvin Seereer­am v Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (H.C.A. No. S-262/2001), there was a rul­ing in favour of Seereer­am on the eve of his re­tire­ment in 2001. He was Act­ing Di­rec­tor of Agri­cul­tur­al Plan­ning, Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources.

Ac­cord­ing to tem­po­rary judge, Stan­ley Mar­cus, on De­cem­ber 19th, 2001:

“As stat­ed be­fore, the ap­pli­cant re­count­ed a num­ber of in­ci­dents in his af­fi­davit, which went un­con­tra­dict­ed, and which in this Court’s judg­ment clear­ly es­tab­lished a lev­el of an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and him­self. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is his de­po­si­tion that the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary said to him that so long as she oc­cu­pied that of­fice, he would nev­er be pro­mot­ed. The cir­cum­stances of the oth­er two act­ing of­fi­cers be­ing con­firmed in their posts while he was not can­not be ig­nored…”

In the case of Har­ri­dath Ma­haraj v Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (CV 2007-01093), Ma­haraj ar­gued that he was un­law­ful­ly by­passed for pro­mo­tion to the po­si­tion of Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er and that his ju­nior was un­fair­ly favoured over him, as he was nev­er in­formed about any de­fi­cien­cy in his ap­pli­ca­tion and he was not in­vit­ed to at­tend any pro­mo­tion­al in­ter­view.

Madam Jus­tice Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee ruled in favour of Ma­haraj on Ju­ly 16th, 2009 and or­dered:

“(a) The Court de­clares that the Com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion not to in­ter­view the Claimant with­out hav­ing con­sid­ered his equiv­a­lent com­bi­na­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence and train­ing was un­fair, ir­ra­tional and made with­out due re­gard to a rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tion con­trary to the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act Chap. 7:08.

(b) The Com­mis­sion shall pay to the Claimant costs in the sum of $100,000.00.”

How­ev­er, she could not un­do the par­al­lel de­ci­sion of the PSC to ap­point some­one else as Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er.

Is it time to ex­am­ine the record of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions close­ly?

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.