Derek Achong

The Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS) has been or­dered to pay $35,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a woman who was un­able to par­tic­i­pate in a re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise to be­come a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer be­cause she wears a hi­jab. 

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment yes­ter­day, Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT) chair­man Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael and lay-as­ses­sor Lenore Har­ris or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion as they up­held Aisha Sabur’s un­law­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion claim against the State-com­pa­ny. 

Sabur’s com­plaint against MTS stemmed from an in­ci­dent in April 2017 when she was told she could not be screened with­out her hair and neck be­ing vis­i­ble. 

Sabur was in­ter­viewed by a news­pa­per about what tran­spired and af­ter the ar­ti­cle was pub­lished MTS of­fi­cials of­fered her $30,000 in com­pen­sa­tion and a job in its main­te­nance de­part­ment, which did not have the same uni­form re­quire­ments. Sabur re­fused the of­fer as she pur­sued her com­plaint be­fore the EOT. 

In it de­fence, MTS claimed it was mere­ly ap­ply­ing a pol­i­cy un­der the Sup­ple­men­tal Po­lice Act and cor­re­spond­ing reg­u­la­tions, which it is bound by. 

It al­so claimed that af­ter the in­ci­dent, it wrote to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for the se­cu­ri­ty uni­form pol­i­cy to be changed to ac­com­mo­date the wear­ing of re­li­gious head­dress. 

The change was even­tu­al­ly ap­proved in 2019 af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the pol­i­cy, which al­so ap­plied to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), in a sep­a­rate case be­fore the High Court. 

In de­cid­ing the case, the EOT pan­el ruled that MTS is still li­able al­though it was ap­ply­ing a pol­i­cy which was le­git­i­mate at the time but was sub­se­quent­ly found to be un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. 

“The sit­u­a­tion that the re­spon­dent found it­self in is un­for­tu­nate, be­cause at the ma­te­r­i­al time its hands were lit­er­al­ly tied by the tenets of the Po­lice Ser­vice gov­er­nance,” it said.

“Nev­er­the­less, if the rules on which the re­spon­dent re­lies have been deemed il­le­gal then the re­spon­dent’s pol­i­cy that re­lied on these rules can­not be oth­er­wise.”  

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate re­lief for Sabur, the pan­el de­clined to make an or­der in re­la­tion to MTS’s uni­form pol­i­cy based on the fact that it was even­tu­al­ly amend­ed to ac­com­mo­date the hi­jab. It al­so de­clined to or­der MTS to of­fer her a po­si­tion as a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer.

“The com­plainant has pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence to show that, if her ex­pe­ri­ence and train­ing were du­ly con­sid­ered, she would have had a rea­son­able chance of suc­cess of ob­tain­ing a job with the re­spon­dent as a se­cu­ri­ty re­cruit,” it said.

It al­so re­fused to or­der MTS to apol­o­gise to her as it com­mend­ed its han­dling of her case. 

“The fact that, with­out com­pul­sion, the re­spon­dent took im­me­di­ate steps to meet with the com­plainant and her at­tor­ney and to of­fer her rea­son­able mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion and/or al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment shows the re­morse­ful ap­proach the re­spon­dent has al­ready tak­en and its will­ing­ness to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and make amends,” it said. 

In de­ter­min­ing the mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion for Sabur, the pan­el con­sid­ered the dis­tress, in­con­ve­nience and hu­mil­i­a­tion she would have suf­fered. 

How­ev­er, it not­ed that any vit­ri­ol hurled by so­cial me­dia users at her fol­low­ing her wil­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in the news­pa­per in­ter­view could not be rea­son­ably fore­see­able by MTS. 

MTS was or­dered to pay the com­pen­sa­tion by May 31 and will be forced to pay in­ter­est at a rate of three per­cent per an­num if the dead­line is not met. 

Sabur was rep­re­sent­ed by Aaron Seaton, while Michael Vial­va rep­re­sent­ed MTS.