Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A teacher has won his law­suit over the re­fusal of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) to dis­close in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to a mis­con­duct com­plaint made against him.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Thurs­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed up­held the ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the com­mis­sion brought by the teacher, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held by this news­pa­per as the dis­ci­pli­nary process is still on­go­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in Jan­u­ary 2016 the com­plaint was made against the teacher.

A lit­tle over three years lat­er, he ap­plied un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for the com­mis­sion to dis­close the name of the com­plainant, the com­plaint sub­mit­ted, and the re­port of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the com­plaint.

The TSC ini­tial­ly claimed that the in­for­ma­tion was ex­empt from dis­clo­sure un­der the FOIA as it could be classed as an “opin­ion, ad­vice, or a rec­om­men­da­tion” to the com­mis­sion.

How­ev­er, af­ter the teacher filed a law­suit over the re­fusal, the com­mis­sion claimed that the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments and in­for­ma­tion could not be lo­cat­ed.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed the com­mis­sion’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion.

“It mere­ly serves as fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the source of the re­port or al­le­ga­tion, which is cru­cial for en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the dis­ci­pli­nary process,” he said.

Stat­ing the dis­clo­sure of the com­plaint’s iden­ti­ty does not con­sti­tute an opin­ion or rec­om­men­da­tion over dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion to be tak­en, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: “Rather, it serves as a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent of due process, en­abling the Ap­pli­cant to prop­er­ly re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions and ex­er­cise his rights to chal­lenge the ve­rac­i­ty or cred­i­bil­i­ty of the re­port or al­le­ga­tion.”

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so took is­sue with the fact that the com­mis­sion sub­se­quent­ly claimed that the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments were not in its pos­ses­sion with­out giv­ing an ex­pla­na­tion on how they (the doc­u­ments) were se­cured and lat­er al­leged­ly mis­placed.

As part of his judg­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed quashed the com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion on the dis­clo­sure. He al­so di­rect­ed it to dili­gent­ly search for the doc­u­ments and dis­close them with­in 28 days.

In the event that the doc­u­ments can­not be lo­cat­ed, the com­mis­sion is to pay the teacher com­pen­sa­tion to be cal­cu­lat­ed by a High Court Mas­ter.

The com­mis­sion was al­so or­dered to pay the teacher’s le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit.

The teacher was rep­re­sent­ed by Navin­dra Ram­nanan and Ricky Pan­do­hee, while Rachael Ja­cobs and Michelle Ben­jamin rep­re­sent­ed the com­mis­sion.