Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has grant­ed an in­ter­im or­der tem­porar­i­ly lift­ing the pur­port­ed sus­pen­sion of 13 Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) mem­bers.
Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the mem­bers sought the in­ter­im re­lief last week, as they were al­leged­ly banned from us­ing the ser­vices of the union, from at­tend­ing meet­ings and from per­form­ing union du­ties by PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke in April.

De­liv­er­ing a pre­lim­i­nary rul­ing on Mon­day, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that the “in­ter­dic­tion” of their du­ties as al­leged­ly done by Duke, was in essence a sus­pen­sion.
He al­so sug­gest­ed that Duke did not have the pow­er un­der the PSA’s con­sti­tu­tion to sus­pend or­di­nary mem­bers.
Ram­per­sad’s rul­ing on the is­sue is not fi­nal and it may change when he con­sid­ers full sub­mis­sions in the case in a few months time.
The mem­bers are Dami­an Vin­cent, Ains­ley Williams, Jen­nifer Fred­er­ick, Pre­ston George, Nixon Cal­len­der, Du­aine He­witt, Oral Saun­ders, Dar­ryl Lamy, Ja­son Dot­tin, Jude David­son, Derek Wint, Ian Mur­ray and Sha­lene Su­chit-Dwari­ka.
Saun­ders, Nixon and Mur­ray were pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in the PSA’s last elec­tion in De­cem­ber, last year, in which Duke emerged vic­to­ri­ous and won a third con­sec­u­tive term.
In the sub­stan­tive case, the group is claim­ing that Duke’s ac­tion breached their con­tracts with the union, as mem­bers, and ten­ants of the union’s con­sti­tu­tion.
In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Saun­ders said he and the oth­er mem­bers were grate­ful to their at­tor­neys for se­cur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary de­ci­sion, which he said helped to pre­serve free­dom of speech in the union.
Saun­ders not­ed that he and oth­er mem­bers, who were not part of the group, were sus­pend­ed by Duke pre­vi­ous­ly and won a law­suit which re­stored their mem­ber­ship.
He sug­gest­ed that the pre­vi­ous case was pos­si­bly re­spon­si­ble for the fact that the word “in­ter­dict­ed” was used as op­posed to sus­pen­sion in the no­tice is­sued by Duke in re­la­tion to them.
The group is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ron­delle Keller and Rachel Richards while Ravi Ra­j­coomar and Nali­ni Bansee rep­re­sent­ed Duke and the PSA.