The act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion has threat­ened to sue a lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor for as­sault and bat­tery and defama­tion. 

Vic­to­ria Al­lum, through her at­tor­ney Adi­ta Ramkissoon, made the threat late last week in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the coun­cil­lor, whose name was with­held as the al­le­ga­tions made by her are yet to be proven. 

The al­le­ga­tions stem from an in­ci­dent at the cor­po­ra­tion’s sports and fam­i­ly day, which was held at Nel­son Man­dela Park in St Clair on Ju­ly 20. 

Ramkissoon claimed that the coun­cil­lor met her client at the event and be­gan an un­pro­voked ar­gu­ment over her per­for­mance in her sub­stan­tive role as per­son­nel in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer III at the cor­po­ra­tion. 

She claimed that he used ex­ple­tives and vi­o­lent ges­tures to­wards her. 

“This was clear­ly dis­cerned from the fact that you kept point­ing your fin­gers in my client’s face in which she kept plead­ing for you to de­sist,” she said. 

“Al­so, my client had to brace for fur­ther pro­tec­tion by plac­ing her hands de­fen­sive­ly over her face to pro­tect her­self to which they were force­ful­ly dis­placed by your good­self,” she added. 

Ramkissoon claimed that he charged to­wards Al­lum and had to be re­strained by on­look­ers. 

She sug­gest­ed that his ac­tions amount­ed to as­sault and bat­tery. 

Ramkissoon not­ed that the in­ci­dent oc­curred in the full view of fel­low coun­cil­lors, cor­po­ra­tion staff and their chil­dren. 

She sug­gest­ed that his false and base­less com­ments were in­tend­ed to bring Al­lum’s pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion in­to dis­re­pute.

She claimed that her client has suf­fered men­tal health is­sues since the in­ci­dent. 

“She en­coun­ters sleep­less­ness, night­mares, fear and an over­all hin­drance to her dai­ly life both pro­fes­sion­al­ly and in a per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty,” Ramkissoon said. 

Ramkissoon stat­ed that her client was will­ing to for­go lit­i­ga­tion if he pro­vides a writ­ten apol­o­gy, de­liv­ers an oral apol­o­gy to those present at the event and de­sists from mak­ing sim­i­lar state­ments in the fu­ture. 

She gave the coun­cil­lor 28 days to de­cide whether to ac­cede to her de­mands be­fore she files a law­suit seek­ing sub­stan­tial com­pen­sa­tion.