Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co,.tt

The re­cip­i­ent of a na­tion­al bur­sary for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, who could not ac­cess it be­cause of vary­ing po­si­tions tak­en by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, has been award­ed $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion.

Last week, High Court Judge Joan Charles or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Ajay Bachan, of Cara­pichaima, as she up­held his con­sti­tu­tion­al case against the min­istry over its con­duct.

The case, pur­sued by Bachan’s lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, was con­nect­ed to his de­ci­sion to switch his field of study and ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in 2021.

Al­though Bachan had a life­long dream of pur­su­ing a ca­reer in ac­count­ing, he de­cid­ed to pur­sue a Bach­e­lor’s De­gree in law (LLB) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus be­cause of his fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. The de­gree was fund­ed through the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme.

His par­ents di­vorced when he was very young and his fa­ther, who he lives with, had to stop work­ing af­ter he de­vel­oped chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease.

Two months af­ter start­ing his stud­ies at UWI, he learned that he had been se­lect­ed for a bur­sary.

Based on the award, he changed his course and in­sti­tu­tion of study to pur­sue an As­so­ci­a­tion of Cer­ti­fied Char­tered Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA) pro­gramme at the Stu­dent Ac­coun­tan­cy Cen­tre (SAC).

Bachan con­sult­ed with the min­istry over de­ci­sion be­fore mak­ing the change.

How­ev­er, over a year lat­er, the min­istry told him that SAC was not an ac­cred­it­ed in­sti­tu­tion for the pur­pose of the bur­sary award.

Bachan had to re­ly on loans from rel­a­tives to write ex­am­i­na­tions while fol­low­ing up the is­sue with the min­istry.

While the SAC ini­tial­ly al­lowed him to at­tend class­es with­out pay­ing tu­ition, as he was giv­en a bur­sary award, he was even­tu­al­ly not al­lowed to con­tin­ue.

Bachan filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) seek­ing dis­clo­sure of the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria for bur­saries and was in­formed that it (the cri­te­ria) was the same for the GATE pro­gramme. He was al­so told that since the SAC was not an ap­proved in­sti­tu­tion un­der GATE, it was not sup­port­ed un­der the bur­sary pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, the min­istry al­so ad­mit­ted that sev­er­al stu­dents at the SAC had re­ceived bur­saries.

In May 2024, Bachan was con­tact­ed by a min­istry of­fi­cial, who told him that the po­si­tion changed and he would re­ceive fund­ing be­cause the ac­cred­i­ta­tion is­sues with the SAC had been re­solved.

Bachan filed the case af­ter he re­ceived no fur­ther re­sponse.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment, Jus­tice Charles ruled that Bachan’s law­suit was one of the “clear­est cas­es” of dis­crim­i­na­tion she had seen in her ju­di­cial ca­reer.

De­scrib­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive con­duct of the min­istry as poor and out­ra­geous, Jus­tice Charles found that its bu­reau­crat­ic in­ef­fi­cien­cy and vac­il­lat­ing stance could not be de­fend­ed on a ra­tio­nal ba­sis. She ques­tioned the min­istry’s po­si­tion in re­la­tion to Bachan, as she not­ed that sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced stu­dents were treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly.

She was al­so crit­i­cal of the si­lence and in­ac­tion by se­nior min­istry of­fi­cials while Bachan sought to re­solve the is­sue be­fore pur­su­ing lit­i­ga­tion.

Jus­tice Charles or­dered $200,000 in dam­ages for the dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience he suf­fered and for breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to equal­i­ty of treat­ment from a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty and pro­tec­tion of the law. She al­so award­ed $300,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to high­light the im­por­tance of the right to equal treat­ment.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay his le­gal costs for the law­suit.

Bachan was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aasha Ram­lal and Mau­reen Rad­hay. The State was rep­re­sent­ed by Ste­fan Jaikaran, Sharad Raghu­nath, Lau­ra-Lee Hack­shaw and Adana Hosang.