DEREK ACHONG

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj has suc­ceed­ed in his law­suit against the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, over its fail­ure to com­ply with as­pects of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) over the past decade.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo ruled that the of­fice's con­tin­ued fail­ure to abide by Sec­tions 7, 8 and 9 of the leg­is­la­tion was il­le­gal, un­law­ful and in breach of its statu­to­ry du­ty.

Ma­haraj's law­suit cen­tred around the an­nu­al re­quire­ments of pub­lic au­thor­i­ties such as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) un­der the seg­ments of the leg­is­la­tion.

Un­der Sec­tion 7, pub­lic au­thor­i­ties are re­quired to an­nu­al­ly pub­lish state­ments on its pow­ers and func­tions, cat­e­gories of doc­u­ments in its pos­ses­sion that the pub­lic may ap­ply to ac­cess, the process for re­quest­ing ac­cess to the doc­u­ments and the of­fi­cer as­signed to deal with such re­quests.

The next sec­tion re­quires pub­lic au­thor­i­ties to pub­lish doc­u­ments they gen­er­ate to guide their pro­ce­dures.

Un­der sec­tion 9, pub­lic au­thor­i­ties are al­so re­quired to pub­lish doc­u­ments con­tain­ing ad­vice or rec­om­men­da­tions cre­at­ed by in­ter-de­part­men­tal com­mit­tees and en­ti­ties that fall un­der their con­trol.

Ma­haraj filed the law­suit af­ter he made an ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the FOIA for in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the TTPS's com­pli­ance with the leg­is­la­tion in June last year. He claimed he was con­cerned that the com­pli­ance is­sues would af­fect cit­i­zens' abil­i­ty to utilise the leg­is­la­tion to ac­cess doc­u­ments in the in­ter­est of en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy.

"My ob­ser­va­tion is that these oblig­a­tions work in tan­dem with each oth­er in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the ad­e­quate dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion in the pos­ses­sion of pub­lic au­thor­i­ties," Ma­haraj said in his af­fi­davit at­tached to the case.

In her judge­ment, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo is­sued a de­c­la­ra­tion that there has been an un­rea­son­able de­lay in the of­fice com­ply­ing with its an­nu­al pub­li­ca­tion re­quire­ments. She al­so or­dered the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to pay Ma­haraj's le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the case.

Ma­haraj was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Ganesh Sa­roop, Natasha Bis­ram, and Gary Ramkissoon. The Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Leah Men­doza and Faith Walke.