Shal­iza?Has­sanali

For­mer Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) chair­man Ter­rence Beepath, who was un­der probe for sex­u­al mis­con­duct against a se­nior PTSC staff mem­ber, has been cleared.

Yes­ter­day, Beepath said he felt vin­di­cat­ed and vowed to take le­gal ac­tion against the fe­male staff mem­ber, who is on no pay leave from the State-owned com­pa­ny, as well as PTSC for de­stroy­ing his good name.

"I am go­ing to sue my ac­cuser and PTSC. Def­i­nite­ly a law­suit will come. They have dam­aged my rep­u­ta­tion and fam­i­ly life tremen­dous­ly," Beepath in­sist­ed.

Beepath ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion last month, say­ing dif­fi­cul­ty work­ing with man­age­ment, re­cent at­tacks on his per­son­al life and threats to his per­son­al safe­ty and that of his fam­i­ly were the rea­son.

Asked yes­ter­day if he would like to be re­in­stat­ed, Beepath said that de­ci­sion would have to be made by Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan.

"If they ask me to serve I will serve. Clear­ly, the peo­ple who have stirred up this need to go. I don't know what de­ci­sion the board would make. You can't make an al­le­ga­tion like this and sit down and work com­fort­able with man­age­ment."

Beepath claimed the sex­u­al mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions sur­faced af­ter the board re­fused to in­crease the em­ploy­ee's month­ly salary.

"She is not qual­i­fied and un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion she was pro­mot­ed three times in six months," he al­leged.

Beepath was cleared by at­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Bak­er, an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant, in a "Re­port of In­de­pen­dent In­ves­ti­ga­tion." The12-page re­port, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 9, 2017, was sub­mit­ted by Bak­er to PTSC vice chair­man Joanne Fe­lix re­cent­ly. PTSC had com­mis­sioned an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions against Beepath last No­vem­ber.

A copy of the re­port, which was leaked to the T&T Guardian, showed Bak­er found "the avail­able ev­i­dence does not sup­port the al­le­ga­tions of in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour of sex­u­al na­ture by the chair­man of PTSC." Beepath was ac­cused on mak­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate com­ments to the em­ploy­ee in the pres­ence of oth­ers, but de­nied do­ing so in the re­port.

Bak­er al­so in­di­cat­ed in the re­port that he re­ceived no writ­ten state­ment from the fe­male em­ploy­ee in re­sponse to his re­quest and that the ab­sence of any con­tri­bu­tion had un­doubt­ed­ly lim­it­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"She has been giv­en full op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion with­in the time spec­i­fied. She sent her re­sponse to her at­tor­ney, not to the in­ves­ti­ga­tor ap­point­ed by the em­ploy­er," he wrote in the re­port.

The re­port said the on­ly fac­tu­al is­sue be­tween the cor­po­ra­tion and the fe­male em­ploy­ee seemed to be "a dis­pute re­lat­ing to the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly enu­mer­a­tion." Not­ing, how­ev­er, that the is­sue of mu­tu­al trust and con­fi­dence be­tween the PTSC and the fe­male em­ploy­ee may have been com­pro­mised along the way, Bak­er said the board must now de­lib­er­ate on whether there are grounds for dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against her or it should con­sid­er "a sep­a­ra­tion/ter­mi­na­tion of em­ploy­ment on mu­tu­al­ly agreed terms."

Sev­er­al calls to PTSC's CEO Ronald Forde's cell­phone went unan­swered yes­ter­day.