A city en­gi­neer as­signed to the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion has been cleared of a mis­con­duct charge over al­leged­ly fail­ing to as­sign staff to clean the cap­i­tal city af­ter Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in 2019.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion late last week, the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ap­peal Board, chaired by re­tired Judge Stan­ley John, up­held Ja­son Lal­la’s ap­peal over a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ty Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the charge was one of sev­er­al brought against Lal­la by the com­mis­sion, af­ter sev­er­al coun­cil­lors and Deputy May­or Hillan More­an moved a vote of no con­fi­dence in him at a statu­to­ry meet­ing in Au­gust 2019.

The oth­er charges re­lat­ed to al­leged wil­ful dis­obe­di­ence of spe­cif­ic or­ders and al­leged ab­sen­teeism from statu­to­ry meet­ings.

Lal­la was not sus­pend­ed and con­tin­ued to per­form his du­ties while de­fend­ing the charges be­fore the com­mis­sion and ap­peal­ing its sub­se­quent de­ci­sion. Lal­la de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that the com­plaints were due to fi­nan­cial con­straints and re­sis­tance from staff mem­bers un­der his purview.

All the charges ex­cept for the one in re­la­tion to clean­ing the city af­ter the 2019 Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions were dis­missed but the com­mis­sion pe­nalised Lal­la through a de­duc­tion in his salary in re­la­tion to the Car­ni­val clean up charge, which it found mer­it in.

Lal­la’s ap­peal over the re­main­ing charge was even­tu­al­ly up­held with the com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion on the penal­ty al­so be­ing quashed.

Chris­tine Sookram and Melanie Ab­du­lah-De­venish sat on the board along­side John.

Lal­la was rep­re­sent­ed by Ra­jiv Rick­hi and Mikkell Sama­roo, while Shas­tri Roberts and Vahi­ni Jainar­ine rep­re­sent­ed the com­mis­sion.