Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael has sued the State for al­most $2 mil­lion over un­paid work his com­pa­ny per­formed in re­pair­ing and ser­vic­ing T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ve­hi­cles. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that on Mon­day, Ish­mael’s lawyer Richard Jag­gasar filed his breach of con­tract case against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. 

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ish­mael claimed that be­tween 2018 and 2021, his com­pa­ny, Roll On Roll Off Cen­tre, per­formed the work but was not paid. 

He claimed that his com­pa­ny was owed $2,080,232.58 but was will­ing to ac­cept $1,887,665.36 if he is even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in the law­suit as some of his of­fi­cial records were lost when there was ex­ten­sive flood­ing in Bam­boo #2 in No­vem­ber, last year. 

In Jan­u­ary 2018, Ish­mael’s com­pa­ny en­tered in­to a con­tract with the TTPS to ser­vice its ve­hi­cles. 

He claimed that his client had sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions with for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith over non-pay­ment and he (Grif­fith) agreed to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. 

Jag­gasar claimed that af­ter his client ceased per­form­ing the ser­vice based on the debt, the TTPS and the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Lim­it­ed (VM­COTT) held a press con­fer­ence in Jan­u­ary, last year, to in­vite new ser­vice providers to re­place Ish­mael’s com­pa­ny. 

“It shall be con­tend­ed at tri­al that at all ma­te­r­i­al times and in bad faith the Gov­ern­ment of T&T came to a de­ci­sion that it will not pay the Claimant for works done and be­gan the process of se­cur­ing an­oth­er ser­vice provider to re­place the Claimant,” Jag­gasar said. 

He al­so claimed that through a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) his client was able to ob­tain of­fi­cial records which showed that oth­er com­pa­nies, who pro­vid­ed sim­i­lar ser­vices dur­ing the pe­ri­od, were paid for their work. 

Through the law­suit, Ish­mael is al­so seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the con­se­quen­tial loss­es his busi­ness suf­fered as a re­sult of the con­tract. 

Jag­gasar claimed he (Ish­mael) was forced to re­struc­ture the com­pa­ny as it in­curred sig­nif­i­cant costs for the parts that were used to re­pair the ve­hi­cles. 

“The claimant con­tends that he has been forced to make cer­tain work­ers re­dun­dant to low­er his over­head costs,” he said. 

He claimed that he was even­tu­al­ly forced to close his com­pa­ny’s mo­tor ve­hi­cle ser­vic­ing di­vi­sion. 

The case has been as­signed to High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, who is ex­pect­ed to host a first hear­ing af­ter the 2023/2024 Law Term opens in Sep­tem­ber.