Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Court of Ap­peal is for set for Tues­day to con­sid­er an in­junc­tion seek­ing to de­lay plans to in­tro­duce the long-tout­ed T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) next month.

In the ap­peal, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), through its mem­ber, Cus­toms of­fi­cer Ter­risa Dho­ray, is claim­ing that High Court Judge Bet­sy Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son got it wrong when she re­fused the in­junc­tion, ear­ly last month.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the ap­peal pan­el will first have to con­sid­er whether to re­view Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son’s de­ci­sion or al­low the judge, who is to be as­signed to the case af­ter she (Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son) re­cused her­self late last week, to con­sid­er Dho­ray’s ap­pli­ca­tion afresh.

In the sub­stan­tive law­suit, Dho­ray is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al va­lid­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Act 2021.

She con­tends that cer­tain seg­ments of the leg­is­la­tion are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as they seek to in­ter­fere with the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of pub­lic ser­vants cur­rent­ly as­signed to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) and the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD).

The law­suit specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus­es on Sec­tion 18 of the leg­is­la­tion which was pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on April 24.

The sec­tion gives pub­lic ser­vants three months to make a de­ci­sion on their fu­ture em­ploy­ment up­on the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the TTRA.

Af­fect­ed pub­lic ser­vants have the choice to vol­un­tar­i­ly re­sign from the Pub­lic Ser­vice, ac­cept a trans­fer to the TTRA, or be trans­ferred to an­oth­er of­fice in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

Af­ter the procla­ma­tion, em­ploy­ees of both di­vi­sions were giv­en TTRA em­ploy­ee in­for­ma­tion pack­ages and were giv­en a time line for the TTRA’s im­ple­men­ta­tion, which was sug­gest­ed to be­gin in Au­gust.

In dis­miss­ing the in­junc­tion, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should not be re­strained from ex­er­cis­ing its statu­to­ry du­ties to­wards the pub­lic.

While Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son ruled that Dho­ray had raised a valid case for de­ter­mi­na­tion, she not­ed that the chal­lenge over the va­lid­i­ty of the move was not so “firm­ly based” to jus­ti­fy the in­junc­tion.

“To grant in­ter­im re­lief in the cir­cum­stances pre­sent­ed by the par­ties is like­ly to do more harm than good since the De­fen­dant’s case ap­pears to be stronger than that of the Claimant,” Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son said.

She al­so not­ed that Dho­ray’s lawyers failed to prove that she would suf­fer ir­re­me­di­a­ble harm with­out the in­junc­tion in place.

Af­ter Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son de­liv­ered her de­ci­sion, Dho­ray made an ap­pli­ca­tion for her to re­cuse her­self based on con­cerns raised by PSA mem­bers over the al­leged friend­ship be­tween her hus­band Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son re­peat­ed­ly re­ject­ed the links as she claimed that she could pre­side im­par­tial­ly in the case be­fore even­tu­al­ly con­ced­ing, last week.