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Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Former UTT provost challenges dismissal

by

Derek Achong
2344 days ago
20190313
Dr Fazal Ali

Dr Fazal Ali

For­mer provost and act­ing pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) Dr Fazal Ali is su­ing the ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion for wrong­ful dis­missal.

In a law­suit filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court, Ali is claim­ing that the uni­ver­si­ty’s board act­ed un­fair­ly and un­rea­son­ably when it dis­missed him based on his al­leged fail­ure to act in its best in­ter­est in terms of hu­man re­source man­age­ment dur­ing his tenure.

The case came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Tues­day but was ad­journed to May 27 as Ali’s lawyers had on­ly filed an amend­ed state­ment of case on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ments, Ali, who is cur­rent­ly the chair­man of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, first joined UTT in 2002 when he was as­signed to the of­fice of the cam­pus prin­ci­pal to work on spe­cial projects.

In May 2012, Ali was hired for the po­si­tion of provost, which over­sees the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty, cur­ricu­lum con­tent, ex­ams and stu­dent dis­ci­ple. The fol­low­ing month, he was asked to tem­porar­i­ly hold the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent, which han­dles cor­po­rate gov­er­nance of uni­ver­si­ty fa­cil­i­ties, pro­cure­ment, bud­gets and fi­nance. He held that po­si­tion un­til the fol­low­ing year.

In May 2015, Ali was giv­en a new three-year con­tract, how­ev­er, short­ly af­ter a new board was ap­point­ed fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion in Sep­tem­ber, that year, Ali’s per­for­mance was re­viewed.

Sev­er­al months lat­er, Ali was in­formed that he was placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave to fa­cil­i­tate an au­dit or­dered by the board. Ali claimed that he was con­tact­ed by a news­pa­per re­porter to com­ment on the is­sue be­fore he re­ceived of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion.

At the end of the au­dit, Ali was charged with two dis­ci­pli­nary of­fences over his al­leged role in end­ing the em­ploy­ment of a se­nior lec­tur­er and a pro­gramme ad­min­is­tra­tor. The dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal led by for­mer In­dus­tri­al Court vice pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Bak­er found Ali guilty and he was ter­mi­nat­ed.

In his law­suit, Ali con­tend­ed that the board and tri­bunal failed to con­sid­er that he had a mi­nor role in not re­new­ing the duo’s con­tracts as that fell with­in the re­mit of its vice pres­i­dent of hu­man re­sources and the pre­vi­ous board.

Ali claimed that he was mere­ly asked whether the ab­sence of the two em­ploy­ees would af­fect the uni­ver­si­ty’s on­go­ing aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes and that his opin­ion was con­sis­tent with that of sev­er­al oth­er se­nior staff mem­bers.

“In any event if, which is de­nied, there was any mis­con­duct by the claimant the same did not jus­ti­fy the wrong­ful dis­missal of the claimant and was not in ac­cor­dance with good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices,” the state­ment of case stat­ed.

Through his claim, Ali is seek­ing al­most $800,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, which rep­re­sents the salary and ben­e­fits he would have re­ceived for the re­main­ing eight months on his con­tract.

At the time of his ter­mi­na­tion, Ali month­ly re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age in­clud­ed a salary of $55,000, a $10,000 ve­hi­cle al­lowance and an $11,000 hous­ing al­lowance.

Ali is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau and Fyard Ho­sein and at­tor­neys An­jali Ma­haraj and Aadam Ho­sein. Stephen Singh rep­re­sent­ed UTT.


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