by Derek Achong

The Gov­ern­ment can go ahead with its plans to re­place the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) and the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD) with the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) by Au­gust.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion, a short while ago, High Court Judge Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son dis­missed an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion from cus­toms of­fi­cer Ter­risa Dho­ray seek­ing to post­pone the im­ple­men­ta­tion pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of her sub­stan­tive case over the move.

"Af­ter weigh­ing the rel­a­tive risks in grant­i­ng or re­fus­ing the in­ter­im re­lief sought, I have con­clud­ed that the De­fen­dant should not be re­strained, even by in­ter­im re­lief, from ex­er­cis­ing its statu­to­ry pow­ers or do­ing its du­ty to­wards the pub­lic at large," Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son said.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son not­ed that Dho­ray's chal­lenge over the va­lid­i­ty of the move was not so "firm­ly based" to jus­ti­fy the in­junc­tion. She al­so not­ed that Dho­ray's lawyers failed to prove that she would suf­fer ir­re­me­di­a­ble harm with­out the in­junc­tion in place.

"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.

In the law­suit, Dho­ray is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al va­lid­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Act 2021, which pre­scribed the long-tout­ed shift.

She is con­tend­ing 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 CED and 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 time­line for the TTRA's im­ple­men­ta­tion, which was sug­gest­ed to be­gin in Au­gust.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on the in­junc­tion, last Fri­day, Dho­ray's lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, claimed that the Gov­ern­ment was go­ing ahead with its plans de­spite the pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tion.

"We are say­ing that if they trans­fer they would no longer be pub­lic ser­vants or en­joy the pro­tec­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with such. This af­fects thou­sands of work­ers," Ram­lo­gan said.

Deal­ing with an af­fi­davit filed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Ram­lo­gan ques­tioned his (Im­bert) claim that the in­junc­tion would ham­per the coun­try's abil­i­ty to col­lect tax­es and have a knock-on ef­fect on the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ings.

Ram­lo­gan point­ed to a state­ment from Im­bert from 2020 in which he praised the IRD for ex­ceed­ing their tax col­lec­tion tar­gets fol­low­ing a tax amnesty.

"The doom and gloom sto­ry if this does not hap­pen is a scare tac­tic," Ram­lo­gan said.

He point­ed to sta­tis­tics that showed that the IRD and CED were se­vere­ly un­der­staffed.

"They are ad­ver­tis­ing for staff when they are starv­ing the ex­ist­ing in­sti­tu­tions...They (ex­ist­ing staff) are do­ing the best for the coun­try based on their lim­it­ed re­sources," he said.

He al­so main­tained that the TTRA was not im­mune from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence as tout­ed.

"The min­is­ter is the pup­pet mas­ter and the TTRA's strings are at­tached to his fin­gers," Ram­lo­gan said.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes called on Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son to dis­miss the ap­pli­ca­tion.

"This is a case where they are ask­ing the court to sus­pend the op­er­a­tion of leg­is­la­tion. It is in force un­til the court makes an or­der that it is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al," Mendes said.

"You are not al­lowed to sec­ond guess Par­lia­ment's in­ten­tion in pass­ing the act," he added.

He al­so point­ed out that if staff make de­ci­sions on their fu­ture em­ploy­ment based on the leg­is­la­tion, they would be re­in­stat­ed if Dho­ray even­tu­al­ly suc­ceeds in her sub­stan­tive case.

"If an act is found to be un­con­sti­tu­tion­al then it is null void and of no ef­fect. They are to be treat­ed as they were al­ways em­ployed," Mendes said.

"What prej­u­dice are they go­ing to suf­fer?" he added.

Mendes al­so stat­ed that the over­sight of the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was per­mit­ted.

"There is noth­ing un­usu­al with the min­is­ter ex­er­cis­ing a de­gree of con­trol," he said.