The Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT) and its chair­man Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael have come un­der stiff crit­i­cism for their adamance in block­ing EOT lay as­ses­sor Veera Bha­jan from tak­ing up her ap­point­ment.

 In rul­ing that the EOT and Prow­ell-Ra­pa­hel act­ed il­le­gal­ly and be­yond their statu­to­ry re­mit in tak­ing the ac­tion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams not­ed that the lyrics of lo­cal dance­hall artist Gen­er­al Grant’s hit “Pure Hate” res­onat­ed with her through­out her con­sid­er­a­tion of the case. 

“Pure hate and act­ing nor­mal,” Quin­lan-Williams re­peat­ed.

In ad­di­tion to is­su­ing de­c­la­ra­tions against the tri­bunal and Prow­ell-Raphael, Quin­lan-Williams or­dered that Bha­jan be paid her salary and ben­e­fits which were with­held since March, plus in­ter­est and that Bha­jan’s ap­point­ment be im­me­di­ate­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed. 

The tri­bunal and Prow­ell-Raphael were or­dered to pay $100,000 in dam­ages for the dis­tress and em­bar­rass­ment they caused Bha­jan. 

Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams al­so or­dered $250,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to high­light the court’s strong feel­ings over what tran­spired. 

“There ought to be a sense of pub­lic out­rage over what oc­curred,” Quin­lan-Williams said as she said the at­tempts to block the ap­point­ment were dis­turb­ing and off-putting. 

She said she had dif­fi­cul­ties in writ­ing the judge­ment, not based on the le­gal is­sues be­fore her but in strik­ing a bal­ance in be­ing crit­i­cal of the con­duct and be­ing ju­di­cious in her choice of words to de­scribe it. 

“It is in­ex­plic­a­ble that this mat­ter is be­fore a court,” she said. 

Quin­lan-Williams not­ed that based on the ev­i­dence be­fore her, Prow­ell-Raphael nev­er spoke di­rect­ly with Bha­jan af­ter she was ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes on March 17. 

“What is up with that?” Quin­lan-Williams asked. 

The judge al­so ques­tioned whether Prow­ell-Raphael would re­con­sid­er her con­tin­ued role on the tri­bunal. 

“I won­der if at the end of this saga, af­ter all is said and done and when there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on de­ci­sions made and ac­tions tak­en, whether the sec­ond de­fen­dant would, in a qui­et time, re­flect on whether she is the best fit for chair of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal,” Quin­lan-Williams said. 

Quin­lan-Williams not­ed that the chal­lenges per­sist­ed even af­ter the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent and Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al stood by the le­gal­i­ty of the ap­point­ment and sup­port­ed Bha­jan’s le­gal chal­lenge. 

“There was no re­gard to the man­date of the tri­bunal to pre­vent dis­crim­i­na­tion and to pro­mote equal op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple of un­equal sta­tus. There was no re­gard for how it would look to the rest of us that a per­son who is law­ful­ly ap­point­ed by Her Ex­cel­len­cy can­not get her just dues from the EOT and its chair,” she said. 

Quin­lan-Williams com­mend­ed Bha­jan for hav­ing the will and for­ti­tude to pur­sue the law­suit. 

“It is not any­one and every­one who can take on that fight but the Claimant can and she has. It is no won­der, there­fore, she was ap­point­ed to the EOT,” she said. 

In her judge­ment, Quin­lan-Williams not­ed that over the past few months, the tri­bunal and Prow­ell-Raphael gave vary­ing base­less rea­sons on why Bha­jan should not be al­lowed to as­sume her du­ties, in­clud­ing the tri­bunal’s lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources, its in­abil­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date a mem­ber with a dis­abil­i­ty and al­le­ga­tions that Bha­jan may be per­ceived to be bi­ased based on her dis­abil­i­ty. 

Quin­lan-Williams sound­ly re­ject­ed claims that Bha­jan, who was born with­out arms and re­ceived the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver) in 2011, did not have 10 years com­bined ex­pe­ri­ence in law and so­cial work as re­quired for the lay-as­ses­sor po­si­tion. 

“As to her qual­i­fi­ca­tions to hold the post of lay-as­ses­sor, her life has been the best tes­ta­ment to so­cial wel­fare. She has lived it. Her ex­pe­ri­ences are from the time of her birth,” she said. 

Un­der the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act, the tri­bunal con­sists of a chair­man and two lay-as­ses­sors. While the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) ad­vis­es the Pres­i­dent on the ap­point­ment of the chair­man, the lay-as­ses­sors are se­lect­ed by the Pres­i­dent. The tri­bunal is man­dat­ed to hear and de­ter­mine dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints un­der the leg­is­la­tion, which are re­ferred to it by the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion. 

In a press re­lease mo­ments af­ter the judge­ment, the tri­bunal said it re­spect­ed the de­ci­sion but con­tin­ued to de­ny any wrong­do­ing.

“The Tri­bunal has been guid­ed by best prac­tices and pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice at all time,” it said. 

“The Tri­bunal re­spects the rul­ing of the Ho­n­ourable Court and will meet with its at­tor­neys to de­ter­mine its next steps. The Tri­bunal looks for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to serve the cit­i­zens of T&T.”

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, the tri­bunal is­sued a sep­a­rate and un­re­lat­ed re­lease in which it an­nounced that its cas­es sched­uled for hear­ing in De­cem­ber were ad­journed, as it re­mains with­out ac­cess to fa­cil­i­ties to con­duct in-per­son and vir­tu­al hear­ings. 

Bha­jan was rep­re­sent­ed by Alvin Fitz­patrick, SC, Ra­jiv Per­sad, Michael Rooplal, Ra­jiv Chaitoo, Shari Fitz­patrick and Gabriel Her­nan­dez. The EOT and its chair­man were rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Leon Kalicha­ran, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ka­ri­na Singh. Rishi Dass, Te­nille Ramkissoon, Svet­lana Dass and Karis­sa Singh rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice.