Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Po­lice So­cial Ser­vice and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion is fac­ing a po­ten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion pay­out af­ter the Court of Ap­peal ruled that its for­mer ac­counts man­ag­er, Shami­la Mo­hammed, was con­struc­tive­ly dis­missed af­ter be­ing false­ly ac­cused of fraud and oth­er mis­con­duct.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered last Thurs­day, Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and act­ing ap­pel­late judges Car­ol Gob­in and Joan Charles up­held an ap­peal brought by the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) against an In­dus­tri­al Court rul­ing that had dis­missed Mo­hammed’s claim.

The ap­pel­late pan­el found that the In­dus­tri­al Court erred in its as­sess­ment of the case and pro­vid­ed guid­ance on how con­struc­tive dis­missal claims should be con­sid­ered in the fu­ture.

Mo­hammed was em­ployed by the as­so­ci­a­tion for 10 years be­fore dif­fi­cul­ties arose fol­low­ing a change in the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive in Ju­ly 2019.

Sev­er­al months lat­er, she at­tempt­ed to cash a $20,000 cheque that was ap­proved by the pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive to as­sist with can­cer treat­ment. The as­so­ci­a­tion main­tained a Can­cer Fund, for which Mo­hammed qual­i­fied, and her ap­pli­ca­tion was ap­proved.

How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion sub­se­quent­ly re­port­ed to the bank that the cheque was fraud­u­lent, caus­ing the trans­ac­tion to be halt­ed. The fol­low­ing day, Mo­hammed was placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave and in­formed the mat­ter was un­der in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. A month lat­er, she was told the is­sue was re­ferred to the Fraud Squad.

In May 2020, the as­so­ci­a­tion ad­vised her that the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been closed and she could re­turn to work. Up­on her re­turn, how­ev­er, her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties were sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.

Mo­hammed ex­changed nu­mer­ous emails with the as­so­ci­a­tion seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion of her role, but two months lat­er she was again con­front­ed with al­le­ga­tions of fraud, mis­con­duct, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty linked to the pay­ment of al­lowances.

Al­though she de­nied any wrong­do­ing, sev­er­al month­ly al­lowances were re­moved from her salary, re­sult­ing in an ef­fec­tive 20 per cent re­duc­tion in pay.

The treat­ment wors­ened in Oc­to­ber 2020 when she was pub­licly rep­ri­mand­ed by then as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son dur­ing a staff meet­ing for rais­ing con­cerns with the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee. The rep­ri­mand oc­curred in the pres­ence of ju­nior staff mem­bers.

Mo­hammed even­tu­al­ly re­signed in Jan­u­ary 2021, and BIG­WU, through at­tor­ney Vashisht Seep­er­sad, pur­sued the mat­ter be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

In Oc­to­ber 2024, the In­dus­tri­al Court dis­missed her claim, find­ing she had wait­ed too long to re­sign af­ter the al­leged breach­es by the em­ploy­er. The court con­clud­ed that her de­lay amount­ed to af­fir­ma­tion of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­duct and that she had there­fore re­signed vol­un­tar­i­ly.

Writ­ing for the Court of Ap­peal, Jus­tice Gob­in held that the In­dus­tri­al Court placed un­due em­pha­sis on the de­lay while fail­ing to con­sid­er Mo­hammed’s cir­cum­stances.

She not­ed that Mo­hammed had an un­blem­ished em­ploy­ment record and could not rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed to aban­don her job im­me­di­ate­ly while fac­ing al­le­ga­tions of dis­hon­esty and the prospect of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

Jus­tice Gob­in said such a course of ac­tion could have ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed Mo­hammed’s fu­ture em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“Her stance of wait and see that there would be some favourable out­come was en­tire­ly rea­son­able,” Gob­in said.

She added: “The court erred in its haste to make a find­ing of af­fir­ma­tion with­out giv­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to these fac­tors and her pe­cu­liar cir­cum­stances and was there­fore wrong to con­clude that she was not con­struc­tive­ly dis­missed but had re­signed vol­un­tar­i­ly.”

Jus­tice Gob­in al­so found that the In­dus­tri­al Court erred in con­clud­ing that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s cu­mu­la­tive con­duct was in­suf­fi­cient to amount to a breach of the im­plied terms of Mo­hammed’s em­ploy­ment con­tract.

“The court’s fail­ure to con­sid­er ma­te­r­i­al facts ren­dered its con­clu­sion wrong in law,” she said.

In strong­ly crit­i­cis­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ac­tions, Gob­in de­scribed its con­duct as “egre­gious.”

“In this case, the em­ploy­er went be­yond squeez­ing out. An or­gan­i­sa­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers threat­ened a work­er with re­fer­rals to the po­lice on two oc­ca­sions in the space of one year,” she said.

The judge al­so not­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion failed to present ev­i­dence sup­port­ing its claim that it had re­port­ed Mo­hammed to the Fraud Squad.

While the Court of Ap­peal ruled that Mo­hammed had been con­struc­tive­ly dis­missed, it did not de­ter­mine the amount of com­pen­sa­tion to be award­ed. In­stead, it re­mit­ted that is­sue to a dif­fer­ent­ly con­sti­tut­ed pan­el of the In­dus­tri­al Court for as­sess­ment.

The as­so­ci­a­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Michael Grif­fith and The­o­la Hen­ry.